


Not Yet Wise

by streetsuss_serenade



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Breaking Up & Making Up, Canon-Typical Misogyny, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2020-02-07 13:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18622012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/streetsuss_serenade/pseuds/streetsuss_serenade
Summary: Nate broke Brad's heart a little less than two years ago, and Brad's been away since then. He's coming back to Oceanside, and he can't wait to show Nate exactly how fine he really is. A bradnate breakup and makeup fic loosely based on Jane Austen's Persuasion.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NoMomImTotallyNotReadingPorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoMomImTotallyNotReadingPorn/gifts).



> _She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she was not wise yet._  
>  — Jane Austen, Persuasion

Brad eyed himself in the crappy hotel mirror, running his hand over his freshly shorn head. It never looked as good when he shaved it himself, but he didn’t want to wait. The guys in his platoon made fun of him for keeping it short even when he was on leave, but he looked more like himself when his hair was regulation length, and it wasn’t like he had anything better to do in a snowed-in Chicago. 

And wasn’t that an appropriate greeting from the old US of A. Welcome home, your flight was canceled, because even though Chicago gets an average of 36 inches of snow a year, it’s run by useless civilians who don’t want to risk scratching their precious Honda Civics, so you’re shit out of luck until they decide to show up for work again.

Still, not even travel delays could fully sink Brad’s mood. He was going home, where he wouldn’t have to put up with low, cold skies and fretful snow. Brad hadn’t been back to California in almost two years, and he was arriving with stories that were going to make Tony weep with envy; stories that he’d earned on his own shoulders without the puffed-up Iceman reputation to smooth the way.

Brad grabbed his duffel and slung it over his shoulder, heading for the lobby and the airport shuttle. As he waited for the shuttle, Brad scrolled through his texts and mapped out his weekend - lunch with his parents tomorrow, a backyard thing at Poke’s and then a big welcome home dinner with his extended family the next night.

Poke had promised that the backyard thing would be small, not even deserving of the name barbeque, but Brad’s text message history showed that as a clear lie. Pappy would be there, as would Lilley, Mike and his entire family, Jacks and his kids. No mention of Nate, but then, there wouldn’t be.

Poke didn’t know anything about what had happened between them, or if he did, he was being uncharacteristically merciful and minding his own business. As far as Brad knew, no one knew that he and Nate had been together, except, at the end, Mike. 

Sliding into the back row of the shuttle, Brad watched the sky lighten. Brad had now been overseas for more than twice as long as he and Nate had been together, and that word was twice as specific as they had ever been about what they were doing while they were doing it.

It was still infuriating. Nate had slid so seamlessly into his life, filling cracks that Brad hadn’t even known were there, only to come to him after eight months wanting to talk about “their circumstances.”

Nate had sworn he wasn’t breaking up with Brad, but Brad wasn’t an idiot. The only “circumstance” that had changed was Brad’s upcoming assignment overseas. He’d thought he could trust Nate, because Nate knew that being a Marine meant being gone, but apparently not because Nate had sat in front of him looking earnest and regretful and talking about being practical.

Fuck his practicality and fuck his regrets.

The whole scene still left a bitter taste in Brad’s mouth. If Nate didn’t have the sack to be with him as he was, then Nate shouldn’t have started anything with him in the first place. Sometimes, when Brad was feeling generous, he wondered if Nate hadn’t known what he meant to Brad. Brad could see how it could have felt temporary to Nate - he wasn’t on the lease, he’d never taken his things out of storage- but it was the most honest relationship Brad had ever been in. Brad had told Nate things, he’d wanted things, with Nate that he’d never wanted with anyone else; he would have welcomed every single box of ratty textbooks that Nate wanted to bring over from his storage unit.

Either way, Nate’s mind had clearly already been made up by the time he spoke to Brad, and Brad was never going to be the kind of person who begged someone to stay when they didn’t want to. He didn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but the upside was that Nate had left the apartment, and they hadn’t spoken about it again before Brad left. Brad had stayed away from California, taking his leave in less fraught locations, and Nate had, well, Brad didn’t know exactly what Nate had done.

Brad stood in line to print his boarding pass and ignored the people giving him and rucksack a second and sometimes third glance. Apparently, men carrying military issued gear weren’t as common in Chicago as they were in California, and the people of the great state of Illinois hadn’t been raised to mind their own business. Christeson was from Illinois, and he certainly did his fair share of slack-jawed gaping.

Brad was just glad not to be in his Class Bs. He was happy to do his duty and remind the sheltered civilians that they were, in fact, a nation at war, but they were a hassle and air travel was uncomfortable enough for people of Brad’s height without the added addition of Marine issued pants.

Nate’d left the Marines, Brad knew that much. He was surely in a serious relationship by now. Brad imagined that Nate thought he was happy with his Gap catalog life.

He had such a clear image of Nate planning his mediocre fucking life in a nice, normal suburb. A pretty wife would certainly be easier than a Marine boyfriend. Nate was checking off the boxes one by one, well on his way to three kids, a golden fucking retriever, a sensible sedan. All the things Nate thought he should want. The poster boy of the American Dream.

Brad handed his ID and boarding pass to the security agent and wondered if Nate had realized yet that the American Dream was boring as shit. He hoped he had, that the quiet desperation was quietly eating him up.

He’d never admit it, Brad knew, but Nate would look at Brad and know in his bones that he’d made a mistake. He’d chosen wrong. Brad had turned himself inside out for Nate, and Nate had chosen normalcy and mediocrity, and Brad hoped it choked him every night.

At his gate, Brad tucked himself firmly into a corner where he could stretch his legs and tried to shake himself firmly into the present. As Nate himself would say, Brad needed to snap to. Oceanside had been his home long before Nate, and he had more to look forward to than to regret.

He couldn’t maintain a long-term relationship and be a Marine. If it were going to happen, it would have happened with Nate. He knew that now and he accepted it. The Marines made a better mistress than one person could anyway. These last two years had been some of the best of his career, and he was going to parlay them into a promotion and a prime position. He hadn’t been given a choice, but if he had, the Marines still would have been the right one.

✦

 

Nate had been at work for fourteen hours when Mike’s call came through. Of course, he didn’t know how late it had gotten until after he dug underneath the scattered files from three different cases and found his phone in the drifts of paper. He’d wanted to be annoyed with Mike for calling when he was at work until he’d noticed that it was 8:15; In his windowless box of an office, all times of day looked the same.

“Hello, Mike.”

Mike got straight to business, “Nate, Colbert’s coming back, coupla new doodads pinned to his uniform. Thought you’d want to know.”

“I heard,” Nate said easily, “Good for him. Apparently, I’m on cups and napkin duty for Espera’s party.”

Poke had texted him the time, place and an assignment to bring paper goods for Brad’s homecoming barbeque without even asking if he were free. Everyone knew how well Brad and Nate had gotten on, there was no question in their minds that Nate would clear his schedule to welcome home their long-overdue comrade.

The only one who knew enough to question it was Mike, and sure enough, here he was, checking in. Nate shuffled through some of the pages on his desk, throwing away a few empty coffee cups and the core from the apple which had served as his lunch.

“Fuck. I wanted you to hear it from me. Should’ve known Poke would be quick to get the word out. He pretends to be hard, but he fusses over that boy more’n he does his own babies.”

“It’s fine,” Nate reassured him, “It was all a long time ago.”

Mike snorted, but all he said was, “So you’re coming to the thing?”

“I think we both know that Brad will feel more welcomed if I’m not there. And I can’t, anyway, I’ve got a race that day.”

He hadn’t before he’d gotten the text, but Mike didn’t need to know that. A quick search of his running message boards had turned up someone selling a bib to a 10k, so that was that. An unalterable commitment that would prevent him from attending the barbeque, what a shame. It wasn’t his finest moment.

Still. There was no good place to run into the ex you still hadn’t gotten over, but in front of all of your closest friends and colleagues, most of whom had no idea you’d ever been together, certainly had to be one of the worst.

“Another one?” Mike asked, “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it? You have to sleep sometime, kid.”

Nate had been planning on taking more time off after his triathlon, but he was confident in his ability to run a 10k without much prep, so the risk of overtraining was low.

“Speaking of fussing over Marines more than you do your own children…” Nate countered, making Mike laugh.

“You’re a different case. If I didn’t keep after you, you wouldn’t do anything but train and work.” His tone became more cautious, “You’re good?”

“Mike, I’m _fine.”_

Mike didn’t have to say anything to call bullshit on that. It was one of his strongest talents.

Nate doubled down. “I knew his posting was temporary, and we all expected him back weeks ago. I’m honestly fine.”

And so are we, Nate didn’t say, though he knew that was largely the impetus behind Mike’s call. He’d long since made his peace with Mike’s role in the catastrophic breakup of his relationship with Brad.

Nate stood and paced a small circle in his office, as Mike told him what everyone else had told him about Brad and his triumphant return. If the grapevine were to trusted, Brad had single-handedly turned the tide of the US war in Afghanistan. Nate almost believed it.

It had probably been better for Brad, in the long run, to go off to his amazing opportunity without the distraction of Nate’s life imploding back in the States. Brad had excelled just as Nate had known that he would. Nate had struggled for a while, but he’d gotten his feet under him eventually, and none of it was Mike’s fault.

He couldn’t blame Mike for his own weakness. If Nate had had the self-assurance to stand for what he knew was right for him, well. It was a lesson that cost dearly, but Nate had learned it just the same and there was no use mulling over what could have been.

Mike and Nate spoke for a few more minutes about work and Mike’s kids and then Nate snapped his phone shut and pressed it to the desk while waiting for his heartbeat to even out. After a few seconds, he began sorting his files into their appropriate piles.

The third time he caught himself staring blankly at a clearly labeled piece of paper, he realized that he wasn’t going to get any more work done tonight; not now that the spectre of Brad had been raised by Poke and then made painfully real by Mike’s gruff concern. He needed to go home, get some sleep, and gather his defenses.

Brad was coming back to Oceanside, and Nate needed to pull himself together. They’d been uneasy friends before they’d been anything else when they’d had the officer-enlisted divide, Captain Schwetje, and a dozen unforgiveable cockups by command in between them. Surely, they could occupy the same social circle without casualty.  He was going to be fine. His friends needed him to be fine.

✦

Tony Espera was a goddammed liar. He’d promised that he wasn’t going to go overboard, but when Brad arrived at the house, he had to park two blocks away because of all the people who’d already arrived. Poke’s two-bedroom ranch house was packed with Marines and their families and what looked like all of his and Alicia’s extended family plus more than half the Mexican population of Oceanside.

Bypassing the scrum in the house, Brad skirted around the kids playing soccer in the yard and walked down the side yard. Poke might have endless shit to say about the emptiness of the American dream, but his house had always given him away. It was on the small side, but it was meticulously maintained. The fence around the backyard was given a fresh coat of paint every year, and one corner of the not-expansive backyard was given over to a large raised garden bed that Brad had helped Poke build a few years back. Whenever they were stateside, Poke’s days off were endless home improvement projects, interspersed with children’s birthday parties.

For a second after Brad turned the corner of Poke’s house, everything seemed wrong. The constellation of bundled-up men scattered around Poke’s patio was unfamiliar; then he blinked and they weren’t. Poke was exactly where Brad expected him to be - manning the new grill he was determined to use despite that fact that it was winter.

Pappy, sprawled in one of the chairs, raised his chin in Brad’s direction and said, “Look alive, gents, the Iceman cometh.”

Brad didn’t bother pretending he wasn't glad to see them. It had been a long time, and they’d know he was full of shit anyway. He received hugs and back pats from Poke, Pappy, and Lilley, and was handed a beer by Tony’s brother-in-law, who, if Brad remembered correctly, wasn’t too much of an asshole. Fucked if Brad could remember his name, though.

Brad took a seat in one of the metal chairs and stretched his legs across the concrete slab that functioned as Poke’s back patio. Poke had added a sheet metal awning since Brad had been gone, which was ugly as all fuck but served to keep them out of the damp day, so Brad wasn’t going to complain.

Poke started taking ears of corn from a platter and placing them on the upper rack of the grill.

“Isn’t it beautiful? Just got it last week. Got a great deal.”

Brad eyed the dull metal casing. It looked like a pretty standard grill to him, but he was spared the lie by Lilley who piped up, “Yeah, brah, ‘cause no one else is crazy enough to grill out in January.”

Poke tossed him an aggressive grin, “You cold, Lilley? I’m sure there’s room for you in the kitchen with the other bitches. Nah,” he continued without waiting for Lilley to answer, “that’s just a problem you white motherfuckers have. My people have been here since the beginning, dawg. We’re acclimated to this place. We _belong_.”

“That don’t make no fucking sense,” Pappy objected from his seat, “Eskimos have been in the Arctic since the beginning but they ain’t running around a blizzard in their skivvies talking about how great the weather is.”

“Pretty sure the first settlers didn’t have Goretex jackets keeping them warm either,” Brad said.

Tony’s unnamed brother-in-law snorted into his beer. Cheerfully, Poke flipped them all off and turned back to his grilling. Brad grinned.

“Kocher’s inside.” Pappy said conversationally, “his kids’re playin’ with Jacks’. So’s Stafford.”

Brad was pleasantly surprised. Kocher’d had trouble with seeing Brad be rewarded at the same time his career was in the shitter with no difference between them but the commander of their platoon. He’d tried to hide it, but things had been strained. Brad was glad he was here.

“Nate wanted to come.” Lilley said, visibly gratified to be on a first name basis with the man, “but he had a race. A 10k. If he hadn’t already paid for the registration, he would’ve come.”

That was obviously a lie, but Brad didn’t bother to correct him. Nate was off doing whatever it was Nate did these days, and Brad didn’t give a shit. The only benefit to Nate being here would have been so that Brad could show him exactly how much of a shit he didn’t give but there’d be plenty of time for that later.

He lifted his beer in acknowledgment and said, “I’ll head into the lunacy after I’ve fortified my spirit.”

Pappy laughed. “Reyes said to tell you hey. He’s working today _.”_

Brad nodded. Lilley held up his phone, “Qtip says Mike just got here. Says not to ask why his wife isn’t here with him. Apparently, it’s a fucking mess.”

Brad wasn’t thrilled by the idea of seeing Mike again. He might never know exactly what prompted Nate to turn tail and run, but he knew Mike was involved. The words resounded in Brad’s head like artillery shells.

“I was talking to Mike, and it all became clear. I was naive to think I could make this work.” As if it were all on him. As if Brad were a bystander in their relationship, or, more likely, as if Brad were so deeply fucked up that he couldn’t build something functional on his own. Brad could be pretty clear whom that idea had come from.

Mike had never thought Brad was good enough for his golden child. Not romantically, not professionally. It hadn’t escaped Brad’s notice that half of his conversations with Nate in Iraq ended up including Wynn as well, even if the man hadn’t been anywhere in sight when he’d approached.

Mike had a second sense for when the two of them were talking and appeared out of nowhere to drag Nate away or to hover and shoot disapproving looks. At the time, Brad had assumed that Mike was worried about Nate’s reputation. He was already suspect with battalion and showing favoritism among his team leaders would only give Encino Man another reason to jump up Nate’s ass.

But then it had continued once they were home. Brad would look up from a conversation and find Mike’s concerned eyes watching them or turn to find Nate being dragged into another conversation. They’d joked about it once, him and Nate, how Mike was like a social sheepdog, trying to herd them all into their proper groups.

After they’d broken up, when Nate was avoiding Brad’s eye at work and, presumably, sleeping on Mike’s couch, Mike had tried to approach Brad a couple of times, hound dog eyes soft, to ask how he was doing. Brad had blown him off only because punching Mike in the face was likely to delay his transfer and he needed to get the fuck out of Oceanside.

But now Brad was back and when he was reactivated, he and Mike were likely going to be part of the same unit, so Brad needed to set it aside. Mike was good at babysitting the cherry officers and keeping them from all getting their asses blown off because somebody in the chain of command panicked. Brad didn’t have to like him to work well with him.

They’d see each other at a lot of the same events, but proximity didn’t have to equal intimacy, and Brad was sure he could mostly avoid the man. After he finished his beer, Brad decided to head into the house. He wanted to see Kocher and Stafford, and he wasn’t going to let Mike decide any more of his actions for him. He said his goodbyes and stepped through the cloudy sliding door.

As predicted, Poke’s house was a madhouse. Every chair was taken and clusters of people blocked most of the paths through the den and living room, with walking made more difficult by the children weaving heedlessly through the crowd at knee height. Poke had painted since the last time Brad had been there, but no amount of daisy yellow would make that room feel large enough for all of these people. Five people were squeezed on the threadbare couch, and another person was keeping toddler heads from sharp coffee table corners. As always, the Virgin Mary stared sanctimoniously at Brad from above the door to the kitchen. Brad stood by the door for a moment, soaking in the familiar chaos, then spotted Stafford and Garza talking to Jacks and headed their way.

He exchanged the same basic pleasantries with them that he had with his friends on the patio. He’d never understand why people insisted on asking about flights - no one had an interesting response to that question.

Jacks spouted off some moto bullshit about Brad “getting back into shape so he could be ready for First Recon,” and Brad considered putting him in his place just because he could, but Stafford interrupted.

“Sgt. Colbert could kick your ass; Tell him the real news like Sixta’s fucking failure of a training mission!”

Wynn was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against the narrow door frame. Brad saw Wynn notice his arrival, and was gratified to see Mike content himself with a head nod and nothing more. Brad nodded cooly back, and duty done, turned back to the story Stafford was telling about a trip that either gone horribly wrong or horribly right depending on if you found frozen vomit hilarious. Not for the first time, Brad pitied Stafford’s parents. 

“Colbert,” said Kocher’s gravely voice over his shoulder, and Brad turned to a firm handshake and a welcome hug. “Good to have you back among the righteous, brother. How was your flight?”

“Miserable,” Brad said, “but over.”

He told them all about his posting and fielded the questions Garza and Stafford peppered him with. At some point, someone pressed a fresh beer into his hands. Kocher laughed so hard he nearly knocked a stack of DVDs off the bookshelf at Brad’s complaints about the RTO who’d made the mistake of thinking that Brad was kidding about his Charms ban. The empty-headed asshole was lucky Brad had ever let him eat a complete meal again.

✦

According to Lilley, who’d texted him first thing Sunday morning, Nate had missed an awesome party. Brad was back, and it was like he’d never left. While Nate lay on the couch with ice packs on both knees, Lilley gleefully filled him in on every one of Brad’s sarcastic put-downs and tales of valor from his time abroad.

Nate didn’t know how to indicate that he wasn’t interested without seeming suspiciously uninterested, so he stretched his aching muscles and texted Lilley variations on “That’s great” and “It sounds like you had fun” for an hour, as his stomach knotted and cramped. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. Despite the fact that all of his joints were letting him know that the 10k had been too much too soon after his last road race, it had clearly been the right decision.

Brad was back and it had taken less than one event for him to establish himself as the center of their social circle. Nate was going to have to rid himself of this gnawing pit of wistfulness and pain or he was going to have to get an entirely new set of friends.

Nate gingerly made his way into the kitchen to grab more ice for his knees. Unfortunately, Brad’s successful re-entry into Oceanside circles was only one of the problems facing Nate this morning.

His boss had decided, overnight, that he wanted to take a completely different approach to the case he was arguing next week, which meant that Nate had to re-research and re-write six weeks of work in five days, while fielding a constant stream of abuse about what a waste of space he was for not thinking of it sooner.

Nate was facing another Sunday of strained eyes and, he realized as he looked in his dingy refrigerator, take out. He wasn’t going to have time to make it to the grocery store if he wanted to get a decent list of citations pulled for Caplan by tomorrow.

The fact that Nate had thought of this angle when they were first handed the case was irrelevant. When Nate had first started this job, after the first time he was screamed at for changing something that he knew he’d been instructed to change, Nate argued. For a while, he’d emailed summaries of their discussions back to his boss, to ensure he had the directions correct, but he’d quickly learned that the only crime in his office worse than actually making a mistake was pointing out that Caplan had made a mistake.

At this point, Nate didn’t bother to do anything other than apologize and fix whatever Caplan was spouting off about, because anything else bogged down his week in a back and forth about who was right and why Nate had misinterpreted the instructions he’d been given. Nate had too much to get done, and their clients’ cases were too important, for Nate to waste time indulging his own ego. If Caplan wanted to tell Nate that any kindergartener could do his job without this much handholding, it meant nothing to Nate. As long as Caplan stayed out of his way and let him do the work.

Nate was so tired. He’d taken this job because Caplan had told him they’d be the last line of resistance keeping families in their homes, and he’d wanted to do something with clear wins and losses. Most people didn’t know the rights tenants had under the law, and, on the straightforward cases, he was often genuinely was able to help people advocate for themselves and improve their living situations. Besides, he figured that being a “research assistant,” which was code for gopher, chief filing officer, and lackey, would give him a sense of whether or not law school was right for him.

So far all he’d learned was that landlords were scum, the system was rigged against his clients, his boss was an asshole, and while he didn’t want to do this forever, he had no idea what he wanted to do instead. He was so sick of being told to keep his head down and make concessions now, because maybe, someday, if he was lucky, he’d be in a position to make real change. Caplan loved to tell Nate that he’d understand, eventually, why they couldn’t do one thing or another or they couldn’t take on that landlord, even though their client was clearly right. How Nate would learn “how things worked.”

Nate leaned against the counter and picked at the chipping paint on the cabinet. Underneath the current red, he could see at least four other layers of paint. He shouldn’t, but one more ding wouldn’t really make a difference. The whole place was falling apart.

He hated his boss and he hated this place. It was drafty and small, and it came furnished, which meant that half of the furniture was uncomfortable and all of it was ugly. Nate had never intended to stay in this apartment this long. He’d never intended to stay in this job for this long either, but every time he pulled up rental listings or job postings, one of his clients called frantically about an eviction notice or one of his Marines broke up with his girlfriend and spent two weeks hungover on Nate’s couch or Caplan decided he needed six weeks of work redone in less than a week.

Once Nate started at the firm, Caplan had realized that, despite his lack of credentials, Nate was a good researcher and a decent legal writer, and he’d started pawning off more and more of the casework on Nate. Nate had hired another associate, who now did most of the straightforward client-facing work, leaving Nate over his head and struggling to help people through complicated legal issues he was only beginning to learn himself. Caplan showed up at the office long enough to highlight all of Nate’s failures and incompetencies and then left again to see and be seen, dining out on his reputation as a lawyer with the heart of gold, champion of the downtrodden.

Most of the time, Nate didn’t mind that he hadn’t progressed as far as he’d thought he would in his career. He was proud of the work he did, and his clients were good people who deserved better representation than Caplan’s half-assed grandstanding.

But Brad had left and come back, and Nate was working insane hours at what should have been an entry-level position, and he was still living in the month-to-month studio apartment Brad had rented to bide the time before his transfer. Nate had taken over the lease when Brad left, only intending to stay for a month or two, but between the breakup, deciding to resign his commission, and the job opportunity with Caplan, moving hadn’t seemed like a priority.

Standing in his kitchen, which Brad had not-so-lovingly referred to as the shitbox when they’d lived there together, Nate thought that he should have reprioritized at some point in the last year and a half. A job he hated, an apartment he hated, a Sunday full of work and a circle of friends who idolized the man who’d broken his heart.  Even he had to admit that was pathetic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“All the overpowering blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her. Still, however, she had enough to feel! It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.”_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -Jane Austen, Persuasion
> 
> I've got a busy weekend so this chapter is coming a little early.

It turned out that Brad needn’t have worried. In his first three weeks back in California, Nate was frequently mentioned, but never actually present.

Best of all, no one seemed to think it was suspicious that Brad hadn’t stayed in touch with him while he’d been gone. Nate was part of their circle because he was around and he was generally well-liked, but without proximity, no one questioned the fact that Brad hadn’t spoken to him in years.  

Once it became clear that no one was thinking about Brad’s relationship to Nate as much as Brad was, he relaxed enough to ask “What does he do?” when Poke said he couldn’t come to dinner because he was working.

“He’s a clerk, I think? I don’t know. He works at a law firm doing something with housing. His boss is a total asshole. Lilley?”

Lilley shook his head. “Yeah, brah, he, like, helps get people houses and stuff. But not the court stuff, because he’s not a real lawyer.”

“I thought he was going off to the most ego-fellating graduate institution he could find so that he could reign over us as a firm but benevolent ruler?”

Poke rolled his eyes, “Because what this country needs is another puffed up white boy thinking he can solve all of the problems of us ignorant savages. I don’t know, dawg, you want to know why Fick’s still hanging around with us grunts instead of with the liberal elite, you gotta ask him. I’m just glad to have a babysitter who doesn’t get freaked when the girls show him how they can put each other in a headlock, you know?”

Brad didn’t, but he let the subject drop anyway, “That’s your fault for teaching them such degenerate moves in the first place. Everyone knows that if you’ve let your enemy close enough that you can get them in a headlock, you’ve already failed.”

Later, Brad couldn’t help thinking about the oddity of it all. Nate’s job didn’t sound in line with the career goals Nate had expressed when he knew him. But then, Brad didn’t know Nate anymore, at Nate’s request, so perhaps that was to be expected.

Still, Marines were the nosiest creatures he knew, and he’d grown up among Jewish grandmothers. He’d been back less than a month, and four different colleagues had approached him to ask what he’d try for next, with more than one voicing the assumption that Brad would throw his hat into the ring for the Staff Sergeant opening in the battalion posting to Okinawa. Brad hadn’t decided what he wanted to do next and brushed them all off, but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that Brad’s career and future plans were considered public property in the same way as Trombley’s kids’ names and whether Tony’s girls should take karate or soccer or both. Nate, despite being an officer, had been fully adopted by Bravo. He babysat and he let Lilley crash when the hot water went out at Lilley’s crapshack apartment, and they invited him to their weekly pool game and to all of their impromptu after work drinking. There should have already been serious strategy sessions about getting Nate away from his dickhead boss.

Brad shook his head and tried to focus on his book. He didn’t fucking care if Nate was working an unfulfilling job, and maybe Nate had worn out the patience of all of their friends by being as pigheadedly stubborn about his job as he was about so many things.

✦

Nate was taking some books out of his backpack when he heard Brad’s voice for the first time in almost two years. Brad sounded exactly the same - confident, cheerful, demanding. Nate’s whole body jumped, and his heart kicked into his throat. Nate closed his eyes. It had to happen sometime, but why now?

He’d had a terrible day at work and he was going to be up all night redoing the proposal that Caplan had handed him today and needed tomorrow. He hadn’t had time for lunch and he’d dropped his keys in a puddle, twice, trying to unlock his car. Nate didn’t have the energy for one more disaster, and yet, here was his ex bounding up the front stairs to Poke’s house.

Brad stopped short when he saw Nate in the living room, whatever he’d been calling to Poke cut off mid-sentence. His clothes weren’t familiar - new jeans, and a shirt Nate had never seen - but everything else was, from his rolling step to his hair, which was regulation length, even though he’d been on leave for weeks. Nate had the wild, impossible thought that Brad kept it short because he knew how well it highlighted his eyes. Brad’s arms flexed at his sides, and Nate knew he fought off an automatic impulse to come to attention. 

Nate hadn’t moved, hands still holding his books, standing half-turned toward the doorway. He probably looked like a deer caught in headlights, but he was frozen by the familiar strangeness of Brad untouchable and just out of reach. 

Nate saw the moment Brad pulled his armor back together; he shifted his face into something neutral and bland and watched Nate carefully, a slight rise of the eyebrow indicating that Nate owed him an explanation.

Nate dropped the books back into his backpack and turned to face Brad properly. He hadn’t bothered to turn the overhead light on, so Brad was only lit by the lamp on the table next to the couch. He looked good. The fading tan was a gift from his last posting, Nate guessed, but he looked well-fed and well-rested, not at all like the gaunt, exhausted figure which haunted Nate’s nightmares. 

“Poke’s tucking Penny in. He should be down in a second.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.” Brad’s voice was no less a shock than it been the first time, even now that Nate expected it. Brad’s cadences were still so well-known to him it felt like they were etched on his bones. 

“Babysitting. Alicia has a meeting.” 

Brad gave a curt nod, “Right. Tell Poke I’m outside. And to bring cash.”

He turned on his heel and left Nate standing in the empty family room. Indistinctly, as if he were underwater, Nate heard a car door slam outside and Poke’s footsteps creaking on the floorboards upstairs. 

When Poke came down, Nate managed to make a joke about cash-only establishments and ask if they were nostalgic for the dark, sticky bars of libo, but he didn’t fully release the breath caught in his chest until after he’d said goodbye to Tony and heard Brad’s truck drive off.

Nate shakily sucked in another breath. He felt cold through and through. Mechanically, he turned and placed the last of his research books on the table. There. It was over. He’d seen Brad and it was fine.  

Realizing, he was gnawing his lip bloody,  Nate shook himself out of his stupor. He walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water. 

The brightness of the kitchen hurt Nate’s eyes, which was a sure sign of a headache brewing. Nate leaned against the counter and closed his eyes for a second. Headache or not, he needed to get his shit together. He’d faced Brad and now he could stop worrying about when it was going to happen.

Usually, he was grateful that Poke’s girls had such an early bedtime since it gave him time to get work done, but tonight, the empty house was especially lonely.

Nate took a sip of water. He’d seen Brad and just as it always had, Brad’s presence had taken up the entire room. The realness of him. The energy. For someone who was spare with his movement and wasn’t given to chattering, Brad had a way of making himself known.

Nate had always thought of it as Brad’s warmth, but now he knew otherwise. Brad was magnetic even when he was being cold. Nate had expected reproach and what he’d gotten was indifference. It hurt just the same.

The dark pressed up against the windows and reflected the brightly lit kitchen back at him, sealing him into his own little world which contained only himself and the natural consequences of his decisions.

For a fleeting moment, Nate thought about going upstairs to check on the girls and see if they were awake, if they needed anything, but he quashed that nonsense firmly, placed the glass in the sink and headed to the living room. He had too much work to do to waste any more time feeling sorry for himself.

✦

 

Nate had a stress headache for three days after he ran into Brad at Poke’s. No matter how many times he reminded himself that he was too busy to waste time thinking of Brad, he’d find himself grinding his teeth, thinking of the dismay on Brad’s face when he saw Nate for the first time. Nate would be falling asleep and the set of Brad’s shoulders would flash into his mind and his stomach would lurch. Brad was so far away from him, but so clearly still the man he’d loved. 

Nate usually tried to make it to one Wednesday pool night a month, if only to convince Mike that he wasn’t becoming an anti-social shut-in. It had been ages since he’d been. Nate had been trying to psych himself up to go, knowing that he couldn’t avoid seeing Brad forever, but somehow, now, having seen him, imagining going was a hundred times worse.

Now Nate had a fresh picture of Brad’s indifference to supply to the worst case scenario. As he imagined Brad’s icy politeness, he could fill in the physical details which had faded after a year and a half apart.

The worst part of the whole thing was that he genuinely didn’t have time to worry about Brad. During the winter months, his office was full of people seeking redress for being charged for heatless death traps. On top of that, Caplan was preparing for final arguments for the biggest case they had on their docket. It was all hands on deck, and Nate had barely had time to do anything but work in weeks.

But now, Brad was hovering in the back of his mind, stressing him out. There was nothing to be done about how it was between them now. Nate had pretty much shut the door on that, and Brad had locked it when he’d ignored Nate’s apology email. It didn’t make sense to waste energy that he didn’t have on worrying about things between them. As long as he stayed out of Brad’s way, Nate knew Brad would return the favor. The only trick would be not to let the pain of it stop him in his tracks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, based solely on the characters in the mini-series


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Now they were as strangers; worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.”_
> 
> -Jane Austen, Persuasion

It took Nate another two weeks to find the wherewithal to make it to the bar for weekly pool. It was simultaneously more and less momentous than he’d feared. When he’d arrived, Brad was in a heated match with Kocher, and Nate was able to establish himself in a conversation before Brad was done.

Still, Nate hadn’t broken his ear of the habit of listening for Brad in a crowd, so no matter how he concentrated on the story Tony was telling him, he was painfully aware of Brad behind him, talking trash and calling shots in a voice declarative and firm. 

By the end of the night, Nate had settled into something resembling composure. If he still felt shaky every time he heard Brad speak, at least no one would know it but him. He allowed himself to think, a little optimistically, that this might not be as bad as he had thought.

Then Brad went to the bar to get another pitcher, and Nate realized with a sour lurch of his stomach that he wasn’t the only one who’d been tracking Brad all night. The rest of the bar, which had faded from his awareness during his fight for normalcy, flooded back in and Nate saw three different people give Brad a speculative once-over as he walked by. He’d been so focused on ignoring who Brad was to him that he’d momentarily blinded himself to the fact that Brad was an unattached, attractive Marine on leave. Nate didn’t have to get used to watching Brad play pool with their friends, Nate had to get used to watching Brad flirt and be flirted with. And likely more.

Nate pounded the rest of his beer and, not caring how unusual it would seem to his friends, grabbed his coat and left with no explanation and no excuse. He didn’t know if Brad was going to pick someone up tonight, but his reserves were far too low for him to handle that prospect. 

Nate couldn’t have said whether it was a drive to punish himself or a desperate need to socialize with someone who wasn’t going to call him “a vaguely human-shaped pile of dog shit” as his boss had earlier that week, but he was at the next Wednesday’s pool night and the two after that.

In that time, Brad was hit on by at least seven people and went home with two of them. Not that Nate was keeping track. He wasn’t, yet he knew. How could he not, when he could still hear when Brad’s voice changed register? When his body still reacted to the dip of Brad’s head right before he said something provocative even when it wasn’t directed at him? 

During one of the early nights, Brad’s flirting drove Nate to take refuge outside the bar. He walked laps around the dark parking lot taking slow, deep breaths of the cool air. He should just leave. He could go home and maybe wash some of the laundry which was threatening to take over his bedroom. It was dark, but if he got his headlamp, he could still go for a run. Nate mentally shook his head and took another lap of the parking lot. That was the coward’s way out. Brad was back, and Nate had to get used to it. 

He was heading back inside when he practically mowed down Poke who had just stepped out the front door.

“Sorry,” Nate lied automatically, “I had to take a call.”

Poke held up the pack of cigarettes as his own explanation and, lighting one, said, “You work too much.”

Nate snorted. Poke didn’t know the half of it. Poke eyed him in the neon light from the bar’s window signs. He shook his head disapprovingly.

“You gotta sleep more, man. I know your boss is a motherfucking tight-ass, but even he has to let you sleep!” 

Nate was fairly certain that Caplan’s plan for him included never letting him sleep and then replacing him when he finally collapsed under the strain, but he didn’t bother to correct Poke. His Marines enjoyed fussing over him, and, now that he was a civilian, it was easier to let them than to protest. Poke was persistent.

“I’m serious! Brad said when he saw you at the house the first time, you looked so different he practically didn’t recognize you.”

Nate felt like he’d swallowed ice. “You talked to Brad about me?”

“Naw, dawg, I’m just sayin. If you look worse here in sunny California than you did pulling watch in Iraq, shit is not on. You can’t let the man keep you down, even if you are the man, ya know?”

“Thank you for your advice, Sgt. Espera, I’ll take it under consideration.”

Poke grinned around his cigarette. “No, you won’t. You white motherfuckers never know what’s good for you, but at least I won’t have your death on my conscience.”

Nate took a long drink of beer. It foamed up a little when he brought it down, and he used the spill as an excuse to walk away, heading back into the bar for napkins. 

Brad had said he didn’t even recognize Nate. While they’d been staring at each other and Nate was feeling like no time had passed, Brad had felt as if he were seeing a stranger. Essentially, he’d told Poke that Nate had let himself go. The fact that he had no way of knowing that his words would make it back to Nate made them sting more. This wasn’t Brad being casually cruel because he was pissed at Nate. This was the unfiltered truth - Brad thought he looked like shit.

Not that it mattered to Nate what people thought of how he looked. If Nate looked tired, it was because he worked long hours at a stressful job where he frequently had to give people devastating news, and he wasn’t going to apologize for that. If his shirts were unfashionably baggy, it was because he often forgot to eat, and running was the one effective stress reliever he had left. Nate deliberately loosened his shoulders. Given their history, it was natural that Brad’s words would hurt, but that was no reason to lose his head. He didn’t have to worry about Brad’s approval anymore. 

When he rejoined the group by the pool table, his shoulders tightened back up immediately. Brad was still off to the side flirting with the three women at the adjacent table. Right now, he was telling a story that had all of them leaning forward into his space and Nate could see Brad’s genuine smile from where he stood. It was a lethally attractive smile, pulling the planes of Brad’s face into something less breathtakingly gorgeous and more approachable. Somehow, the sudden revelation of familiarity was always so much more devastating than Brad’s austere beauty. Nate almost felt sorry for the women Brad was flirting with; when Brad’s full, focused attention was on you, it was almost impossible to resist. 

Nate had made it across a desert and back with Brad smirking at him, unable to call him on it or do anything more satisfying about it. He’d naively assumed that once they were on more even footing, he’d have a better handle on his reaction to Brad. He’d been wrong.

Brad was only two inches taller than Nate, but he exploited them shamelessly. He always managed to be standing just so Nate had to turn his face up to look Brad in the eyes, and every time he noticed Nate noticing, he grinned like he’d just won the lottery. It made Nate want to kiss him; it made him want to hit him. At least once, he’d given up decorum entirely and tackled Brad back onto the bed they were attempting to make. Which of course had been what Brad wanted all along. He was ruthless in pursuit of a goal.

Sure enough, halfway through Nate’s game of pool with Stafford, the women got up to leave and Brad left with them. Nate scratched, but luckily, Stafford was staring after Brad and his conquests and didn’t notice Nate’s reaction.

Despite Evan’s distraction, Nate still lost the game, and since the rule was that loser bought the next round, he headed to the bar. While he waited, he looked around and thought about trying to pick someone up. After all, he might have let himself go too far to meet Brad fucking Colbert’s lofty standards, but he still had some appeal. 

Even as he scanned the bar, Nate knew he wouldn’t follow up on the thought. The idea of making small talk was exhausting, and somewhere along the line, he’d lost the knack. He either talked too much about his job or not enough, and his dry jokes always ended up so deadpan that they landed as serious. Instead, he took the pitcher back to his Marines, listened to the trash talk, and was grateful for the company.

✦

Nate was starting to piss Brad off. Whatever spell had been keeping him at bay had been broken by their run in at Poke’s and he was a more frequent occurrence at the bar, though he often arrived late and frequently had to leave early to do more work. All in all, having Nate there didn’t change the dynamic as much as Brad thought it would. Nate mostly sat back and let the others carouse and gossip.

He looked like shit, bags under his eyes and his hair was in need of a cut, but that wasn’t what had Brad wanting to snap at him. Nate was present but cowed. The worst part was that it wasn’t that he was tired or that he’d gotten a lobotomy and was now a dullard. Brad could see the smart remarks flit across Nate’s face, only to be swallowed. 

  
It didn’t make any fucking sense. Brad had once found himself passionately defending deep dish pizza, not because he particularly cared about it one way or another, merely because Nate was so adamantly insisting that it wasn’t pizza at all but a practical joke played on America by the Midwest. 

Nate had been a few drinks deep at the time, cheeks and ears adorably flushed, and Brad, who’d been in no better condition, had started disagreeing merely to provoke him. The thing of it was that Nate was so fucking stubborn that halfway through the argument things had turned semi-serious, with Brad wracking his brains to find actual logic to defend the posture he’d taken, only to have it all invalidated by Nate shrugging and saying that his palate was too Californian to tell the difference anyway. Brad had called him an "overbearing snob, and a Yankee to boot” and Nate had laughed and kissed him, and then pulled away to argue more.

  
This new, meek Nate was a stranger and he sucked. If Nate was going to dump Brad for mediocrity, then he should at least have the balls to be good at being dull and normal. For fuck’s sake.

It wasn’t until the third time Nate joined them at the bar that Brad figured out what was going on, and, when he realized, it not only pissed him off, it made him want punch Nate square in the face.

Lilley was talking about getting kicked out of a seedy hostel on libo because a drunken Jenga game had gotten out of control and they busted a tv, “Garza claims that he fell, but he was just fucking jealous of my Jenga zen. He knew I was gonna win, so he knocked that bitch over.”

“Fuck you, man.” Garza said, “You’re way too obsessed about that game. You weren’t going to win because you were fucking hammered, and it doesn’t matter, because it was three fucking years ago.”

“The man makes an excellent point,” Pappy put in from the other side of the table. “If you were skunked enough to throw a chair, what makes you think you were gonna win?”

“Brah, back me up here,” Lilley said to Nate, “If he hadn’t’ve cheated, I would have kicked his ass.”

“As I wasn’t there and would have been obligated to stop you if I had been,” Nate said drily, “I’m not sure how much assistance I can offer, but I am sure you were fighting a valiant game when the tower was knocked over.”

Lilley stopped, thrown, for a second, “Oh, yeah.”

Everyone laughed, even Brad. Only Lilley would completely forget which of his friends were there for his drunken escapades and which of his friends literally used to be his boss.

“Ya done fucked up there, Jason,” Pappy said, “that was back in the days when Fick here was pretending to be a responsible adult whose whole job was to keep us from having too much fun.” He threw a wink at Nate. “Luckily, he wised up and came over to the side of right.”

Nate smiled and gave a small laugh, but bit his lip as soon as the attention had moved away from him. His eyes had gone wide and were tracing a nervous line across the faces of their friends.

That dumb motherfucker thought he was there on  _ forbearance. _ Brad didn’t know how he’d gotten such a stupid idea, but he clearly thought that he was there despite his history as their platoon commander, rather than because of it.  Christ, he probably thought they blamed him for that shitshow when Brad knew that, to a man, they loved him unreservedly for how he’d stood for them when the shit was deepest. They all knew that it hadn’t been his fault.

Fucking  _ Nate _ . He didn’t trust any of them. Not to understand. Not to have his back. Not to stand by him …

Brad realized that he was gripping his pint glass so tightly that it hurt; he put the glass down, flexed his white fingers and deliberately put his hands in his pockets. So what if Nate were building relationships with his Marines yet still had one foot out the door? Same shit, different day. Brad had no reason to be furious; it didn’t matter to him. He and Nate were never going to be friends anyway. 

As Brad pushed back at the frustration that no one could elicit in him quite like Nate, Lilley was trying to cajole Nate into picking a board game that could make him throw a chair, drunk or not, while Nate laughingly protested that he was above property destruction no matter what the provocation.

Before he could think the better of it, Brad said, “Stratego” with as much lazy nonchalance as he could muster and had the vicious satisfaction of watching Nate’s shoulders hunch around his ears as everyone turned to Brad for explanation. 

Brad kept his eyes on Nate as he said, “I seem to remember the LT telling a story,” Brad was always surprised at how easy it was to slip into calling Nate the LT. It made him feel like he was fluent in multiple languages. “About losing tv privileges for two weeks for calling his sister an enemy of the state and flipping the board when she blocked a move he wanted to make.”

Nate’s genial smile didn’t falter, but Brad saw the barb hit. It was an innocuous anecdote, unless you knew, as Nate and Brad did, that Nate hadn’t shared this story across a chessboard in Matilda, but during the long, aimless afternoons right after they’d come home, when they were both casting about for any diversion to beat back the awareness that nothing about this return felt right. 

Those hours, spent in various states of disarray, draped across the furniture and floor of Brad’s carelessly chosen shithole of an apartment, were more intimate and sacred than almost anything else they’d done together. One more level of trust that Nate had shattered when he decided their “circumstances” were too complicated for him.

Nate dropped his eyes under Brad’s gaze and looked toward Lilley, “In my defense, I was eight.”

Mission accomplished, Brad turned away from Nate and scanned the bar. This night was turning out to be a fucking frustrating mess, and the best way to salvage it was to end the night with different company than he started it with. The brunette by the bar seemed like she’d be a good start.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing!_
> 
> -Jane Austen, Persuasion

Avoiding Brad at the bar on Wednesdays became the new normal, but it didn’t get easier. Brad held court from a bar booth with as much aplomb as he did from the hood of a Humvee. He was just as funny as he’d ever been; full of sly remarks and perfectly worded character attacks, his presence dominated all of their get-togethers. 

His tales from his time abroad were incredible, yet, because they were Brad’s, believable. No one else could head out to a backwater base with a baby officer who didn’t know his asshole from a hole in the ground and leave with a commendation, but that’s why they called him the Iceman.

Even when he wasn’t there, Brad was unavoidable. It seemed that every time Nate turned around, someone was expressing jealousy about the cool tech (or freaky sex workers, depending on the Marine) that Brad would have access to if he got posted to Japan. More than once, Nate was asked his opinion, with the winking acknowledgment that if the Iceman were going to crack for anyone, it would probably be Nate. It was absurd that no one had noticed that Brad never spoke to Nate if he could help it, except to mock him sardonically.

Brad had never been known for his gentle touch, and his smartass remarks about Nate were no exception. He never crossed the line, but his snarky comments danced right up to it; whether he meant to or not, he narrowed in on Nate’s own insecurities with his trademark precision.

Nate was almost enjoying himself the first time it happened. His stomach still jumped every time Brad spoke, but, if not completely relaxed, he was in the general vicinity of it. Best of all, he didn’t have to leave early to finish a project (though he would have to head in early the next morning,) so he could let himself have a second beer and enjoy his friends without keeping an eye on the clock.

Brad was also in a good mood, having won a few games early in the night then retired to their table to talk shit with Poke. Nate was at the other end of the table listening to Christeson talk about his nieces when Brad’s voice lifted above the din, “We should ask Nate; isn’t that why you all keep him around?”

“True!” Poke agreed, “Sir, hypothetically speaking, if they’ve hired a dickless wonder who read one book one time to advise us on “maximizing our efficiency via synergy” and some other white man voodoo bullshit, what is the maximum number of swirlies we can give him before it can be classified as insubordination?”

“Not an officer anymore” Nate reminded them, hoping that would put an end to it but suspecting otherwise. 

Sure enough, Brad’s lazy diction followed Poke’s voice down the table, “But surely, in your unofficial capacity as our civilian consultant, you can weigh in?” 

The men around them grinned, hearing the phrase as an affectionate nickname, and Nate tried to match their expressions, though he knew that it wasn't. Brad’s grin was sharp as he waited for Nate’s response, and Nate felt a flare of irritation. He had practice in not responding to Brad’s provocation, so he smoothed the urge to snap back, and merely smiled, shook his head, and returned his attention to Christeson.

“Civilian consultant” and variations on it was a well Brad returned to more than once. His message couldn’t be any clearer. Nate didn’t belong among them anymore. It wasn’t even the use of the word civilian, though Brad held civilians in no high regard; it was consultants for whom Brad reserved special judgment. If those who couldn’t do, taught, then those who couldn’t teach, consulted. There wasn’t a man in the Marines who hadn’t been dragged to some seminar or lost a lunch break to a lecture that consultants had promised the officers would modernize their operations and transform everything. Consultants were, in Brad’s opinion, worse than leeches, because at least leeches provided food for birds, while military consultants had no nutritional value. Nate had heard this rant firsthand at Mathilda, but apparently, he’d been the only one so blessed, because no one else seemed to think that Brad was being a dick when he insulted Nate in this specific way.

Nate’s strategy now was the same as it had always been when Brad evoked impossible emotions in him - from the first time Brad had come a little too close to insubordination to Brad’s baffling statements of faith. He laughed, he brushed it off, he tried not to let it wriggle under his skin and keep him up later. 

Nate started adding a short run to his Wednesday night routine. It took away hours of sleep that he probably couldn't afford to miss, but if he didn't run he often lost those hours to anxiously replaying the nights at the bar, so it was a wash. At least when he was running, he could try to trick himself into feeling productive.

Nate tried not to talk too much about his job with these men, especially now that Brad was home. He’d rather not explain that he was in the same position as he was when he started. What he did was important, but compared to what they did, it was a bunch of trivial paperwork. He knew his Marines didn’t look down on him for leaving, but it was hard to shake his own conviction that he let them down by doing so. 

Sometimes Nate wondered if Brad would harp so continuously on this one topic if he knew how much it stuck with Nate afterwards. Late one afternoon, when he was looking for some client documents he dug deep enough into his desk pile to find the folder of grad school acceptance packets that had been sitting there since he’d hastily emailed all of the programs eight months ago to ask to defer. He hadn’t even opened any of the responses, just dumped them all in a folder for a later date. 

This job was always supposed to be a placeholder for him; a waystation on the way to something else. The work he did was important, both to him and to the clients he served, but he didn’t have the training to do it right, and he was sick of being put into positions where all he could do was try to mitigate the effects of decisions that had already been made. He’d wanted to study policy; to figure out how to make systems work for the people they served at the beginning, rather than coming in at the end with a mop. 

He’d applied, but then there’d been a crisis at work and Christeson had gotten mono, and then Mike had gotten into enough trouble with his wife that he’d landed on Nate’s couch for two weeks, and by the time the acceptances came in, Nate was too overwhelmed and too distracted to make the necessary choices, and he’d let the opportunity pass.

The same thing had happened a few months ago, when he’d seen a job posting that looked interesting and gone to the trouble of updating his resume, only to get caught up in something else and forgetting to follow up. 

Nate was still holding the folder when his boss stepped into his tiny office. Steve Caplan looked like the epitome a lawyer, from the top of his slicked back hair to the tips of his dark dress shoes. He lived to see and be seen and had a wide variety of dark suits and flashy watches to ensure he made the perfect impression. None of them had ever been wrinkled by Caplan pushing up his sleeves to actually do any work, and none was stained by a single drop of sweat expended for the sake of their clients, but apparently, that was beside the point.

He kicked at the line of file folders sitting by Nate’s door and sniffed derisively. He hated Nate’s office because it didn’t look like what he thought a lawyer’s office should look like. In Caplan’s mind, part of being a picture perfect lawyer was having an office like his - imposing desk of shiny dark wood and not a single piece of paper in sight. The fact that they needed files to effectively practice law was not a detail which concerned him. He refused to allow any of the files for their open cases to be placed in the filing cabinets, in case another lawyer called and Caplan needed to have the documents to hand, but he also refused to keep them in his office. Thus the chaos in Nate’s office. 

“Was there something you needed, sir?” Nate asked politely, drawing Caplan’s gaze away from the piles. Nate sometimes wondered if the military habit of the deferential “sir” weren’t half of the reason Caplan had hired him in the first place. The man liked to be in charge, and he loved to have his authority recognized. 

It didn’t bother Nate. In this civilian space, sir as a form of address was as empty a signifier as Caplan’s desk. He didn’t respect the way Caplan mismanaged the office, the way he screamed at his employees. He’d heard the way Caplan talked about clients when they weren’t there, and seen the scorn turn to genial smiles and hearty handshakes when they walked through the door. 

What frustrated him was moments like this, where Caplan stood in his doorway and wasted his time, just because he could, just because he liked to make Nate wait. Nate could see his boss decide whether or not to make an issue of the files, but he must have been in a good mood because all he said was _ “ _ New case today. We’re going to make a fucking killing. The clients don’t even know what they have, but the fucking idiot landlord admitted to a shitton of illegal things in text messages. Tom’s going to shit himself.”

He laughed at the prospect. Tom Johnson, the lead attorney for CPM Management, the largest rental company in town, and Nate’s boss went way back, and they had a friendly rivalry from years of working together on opposite sides of the aisle.

He held the intake file out to Nate and didn’t step any closer as Nate stood up and crossed the room to get it. Glancing across the pages, Nate saw that Caplan was correct. 

“This is great. They have a strong case. If we take this to court, they’ll get a substantial payout in terms of damages.”

“Yeah, sure, and we’ll wipe the fucking floor with Tom.”

Still reading the file, Nate didn’t say anything, just nodded absently. This couple had been seriously jerked around by their landlord, and if Nate and Caplan did their jobs right, their clients would leave the trial with enough money to send their baby to college. It was cases like this that made the shit Nate put up with worth it. These people had been wronged, and Nate would be a small part of making it right again.

Even as he thought it, Caplan slapped his shoulder and said “You can get started writing a brief. Try not to fuck it up too much” and left Nate’s office. As he did, Nate’s phone beeped, and he rushed back to his desk. He had a text from Poke.

**_Colbert Pappy and Rudy are coming over for dinner. You in?_ **

Nate’s breath caught in his throat at the mere mention of Brad. He texted back 

_ Not this time. Have fun. _

Nate looked at the file in his hand and the folder of applications on his desk. It was time to make some hard choices. He couldn’t stay in Oceanside to watch Brad come and go, each return undoing whatever progress Nate had made while Brad was gone. 

Maybe Brad had put what might have been, what had been, behind him, but it was time Nate admitted to himself that he couldn’t move on while there was a chance he’d get to spend time with Brad. Every dry observation, every florid speech, every smile, even the sarcastic ones, kindled something that Nate would be better off letting die.

Nate tucked the folder into his backpack. If he had to spend the rest of his life at least a little bit in love with Brad Colbert, then the least he could do was take himself somewhere where it was easier to tuck away.

Nate closed his eyes against the swamping feeling of dread. A new place. A new job. It all sounded so impossible. He swung around in his chair to face the heaping papers on his desk. He was already so far behind at work, and who knows how much work this new case would take.

Nate rubbed a hand over his forehead, try to stave off the oncoming headache. Maybe after Brad left. When Brad got his new posting and headed off, then things would get easier. He’d come up with a plan then. For now, all he had to do was try to appreciate the last few months he got to spend with Brad before he cut off contact for good. It would hurt, but experience had taught him that painful memories were better to have than nothing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi Ray, I missed your ridiculous self! This Persuasion quote is for you:
> 
>  _“There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal...”_  
>  ― Jane Austen, Persuasion 
> 
> CW: Brief suicide mention

Despite how frustrating this new Nate impostor was, Brad managed to neither punch him in the face nor call him a moron to his face. Brad was getting back into the swing of his California life, and he was not going to waste his time worrying about Nate fucking Fick. If he sometimes found himself sniping at Nate, well, that was deserved, and Nate could have shut him down easy enough. He never did.

The struggle ended up not being so much about Brad interacting with Nate as it was watching their mutual friends completely fail at same. It was clear that all was not well in the land of khaki and dress shirts, and no one seemed to have noticed.

Their friends hadn’t quite shaken the habit of thinking of him as untouchable, as if what he needed was none of their concern. It made sense- when he’d been their platoon commander, worrying about what he was thinking or feeling would have been inappropriate. But they’d shaken themselves out of the patterns of automatic deference, so it was frustrating to see them ignore the fact that he had human needs again and again. More than once, when Nate was stuck at work, Brad had to remind them to save a few pieces of pizza instead of scarfing them all up and leaving Nate without dinner.

None of them seemed to have learned to read him, despite the time spent together. Brad noticed that even the men who were closest to Nate - Stafford, Lilley, Wynn- didn’t seem to notice how their casual words affected him. It wasn’t Brad’s place to comment on it, but Nate wasn’t hard to read. It was inconceivable that not one of them had decoded the very sophisticated code of biting his lip and looking like a kicked puppy every time he was worried.

One night, when Stafford was being even more of a pain in the ass than usual, Brad almost snapped and called them out on it.

Stafford was steering Nate around the bar with his arm around his shoulder, demanding that everyone buy him drinks.

“This man is the man, right here. He got my boy Christeson into college!” Stafford was practically glowing with pride, “He’s gonna be a cop.”

Nate smiled wanly at Brad and explained, “I didn’t do much - just kept him from getting too nervous and tanking his ACT scores.”

Brad, who had more experience dealing with the emotions of twenty-year-olds than he had ever wanted, said dryly “And that experience didn’t cause you to change your number and move far away?”

Nate’s smile flickered into something a little brighter, but then Stafford piped in again. “He can’t leave! Where would he go? The LT’s gotta look out for us.”

At that pronouncement, Nate’s smile froze and he stepped gently out from under Stafford’s arm. Stafford didn’t appear to notice, enthusiastically telling Brad how Nate was the only reason any of them hadn’t gotten evicted or arrested or died of scurvy. Nate looked paler at every pronouncement, which made sense since anyone who’d spent any time with Nate knew that he had grade A ambitions. Brad didn’t know what exactly had happened to keep him in Oceanside, but he’d have bet a week’s pay that Nate wasn’t thrilled by his position. Brad wanted to tell Stafford to shut up, but if Nate wasn’t going to, it certainly wasn’t his place. 

Nate said, “I’m sure you could fend for yourself if you had to.”

Qtip slung his arm back around Nate and said, “But we don’t have to, sir! We’ve got you!” and Nate closed his eyes for one brief moment, before smiling politely and acquiescing. 

Brad grit his teeth to keep from scowling. He’d only been back in town a few weeks, and even he could tell that Nate felt trapped by his life, though Brad couldn’t say why. Everything Nate said was a litany of shoulds and have tos. He should be working, he had to pick up Poke’s kids at soccer, he had promised Lilley he’d see a movie but he should be helping Mike build a deck. If Brad could see it, why couldn’t Stafford?

Brad vividly wished Ray were there. Ray wouldn’t have missed how Nate carefully didn’t wince when Stafford spouted off, and Ray would have been able to call it out without ruining the entire evening. Well, no. Ray would have pointed it out and not particularly cared if he ruined the evening. Social disasters were part of the Ray Person Experience.

Since Ray had abandoned them all for the lusty goats and cheap beer in his hometown, Brad made an unfunny comment about Christeson keeping the streets of Oceanside safe from degenerates like Stafford and moved on. No matter what he did for the rest of the night, his eyes kept returning to Nate, and every time he was more dissatisfied.

He found himself pacing a restless watch around the perimeter of their area in the back of the bar, noting Nate's careful not-flinch every time Stafford made a comment about him babysitting them in perpetuity. 

It pissed him off. Call him petty, but he’d been ready to come back and win the fucking breakup. Nate might have done the dumping, but Brad’d gone away, kicked ass and come back totally over Nate. This was supposed to be his goddamned victory lap and instead, he was spending half of his time wondering when Nate had last eaten. Fed up, Brad paid his tab and slipped up the back without saying goodbye to anyone. He didn’t have any more time to waste on this shitshow.

✦

He’d been home for a little more than three months when he finally lost patience with pretending not to notice that Nate was a fucking wreck. His conviction that Nate was in trouble had been equally balanced with his conviction that it was none of his fucking business until a casual comment from Lilley about Nate’s commute raised a distinctly depressing possibility in Brad’s mind.

The next morning, after breakfast, he gave in to his insistent curiosity and called Ray. Brad made it a policy not to tell Ray anything about his life, if he could help it, because Ray was a motormouth pain in the ass, and confidences only encouraged him, but Ray was also ridiculously loyal, and he was the only person Brad trusted not to spread his personal business about, no matter how high he got.

Sitting on his balcony, Brad listened to the phone ring and watched his neighbors get into their cars and head to work.

“‘’Lo?” Ray answered, chewing something, presumably something awful.

“Hey, Ray,”

“Brad, you arrogant bastard! Someone finally taught you how to use a telephone for something other than texting me obscenities! I’m so proud. Don’t worry, buddy, it’s only a matter of time before you master the big boy potty as well.”

Ray, who called Brad more often than his own mother, also kvetched about Brad’s tardy replies twice as much as she did. Ignoring him, Brad jumped straight to the point.

“Where was the LT living the last time you were in Oceanside?” 

“Fucked if I know, dude. What’s going on?”

“Do you know what part of town he was living in?” 

Credit where it was due, Ray was an obnoxious SOB, but he could tell when Brad was being serious.

“Probably the east side? We met for dinner at Lulu’s.”

Brad’s stomach sank. He’d figured, but it sucked to hear it confirmed.

“Thanks.”

“Seriously, Gregory Peck, what’s with the third degree? Is Fick okay?”

Brad leaned back in his chair as if the casual pose could make up for how awful this felt. His relationship with Nate had been short, and Brad didn’t want to admit how large it loomed for him even now. But if Nate wasn’t okay, someone needed to do something, and there was no one better suited to the task than Ray.

“I don’t think he is. I think he’s living in my old place. It was month to month and…” Brad took a deep breath.

This wasn’t an admission of anything other than a failed relationship. Telling Ray that Nate had meant something to him didn’t automatically let Ray see into his brain and tell Ray exactly how Nate shifted things inside him, even now that he was back and everything was fine. 

“And he was crashing with me before I left.”

The silence from Ray’s end of the phone was so uncharacteristic as to feel catastrophic.

“I’m telling you what you think I’m saying. It didn’t last. I’m the last person who should be involving myself in his business, but if he’s living in my old apartment —that can’t be good.”

“Hold the fuck on. You are telling me that not only did you and the LT consummate your epically star-crossed thing for each other, you were so desperate to suck his dick that you let him live with you while you were both still in?”

“Ray,” Brad warned.

“No. That’s fucking stupid. If I hadn’t seen you two staring at each other all across Iraq and back, I’d swear this was a prank call. What the fuck were you thinking? Or is that all you were thinking about? Fucking.”

“Ray. What the hell.”

“Sorry. I know. I just...this really happened? And you never mentioned it?”

“Given that you just accused me of being a cock-crazed sex fiend, I think you can imagine why.”

“Shit, man, I said I was sorry. What do you want, a pint of my blood?”

“Your remorse is coming through loud and clear.”

“I’m sorry it didn’t last.”

Brad had to smile. That was Ray all over. Thoughtful at the most inappropriate times.

“You think he’s not doing okay? I didn’t really see him. We got dinner, and he was stressed about work, but he’s always stressed about work so...”

“Why does he have that job if he hates it?” Brad asked before he could stop himself.

“I don’t know if hates it or if he just hates his boss. He almost went to grad school last year. He got accepted to a bunch of places; I don’t remember why he didn’t go. I was trying to sort out my own shit, and it’s fucking creepy to hear Mike bragging about Nate as if he’s a small child who just made his first finger painting. You want me to ask around?”

“No,” Brad said, though he was dying to know more, “It’s none of my business. But that apartment is a shithole. If you get a chance, maybe keep an eye out.”

“I don’t live there anymore, man. Can’t you talk to Mike or any of the half a dozen other people who are actually there?

“No.”

Ray sighed dramatically because he always had to make sure Brad knew how ill-used he was. 

“Homes, I obviously don’t know what went down between you, but I can’t believe you’re even worrying about this. In my opinion, all exes can fuck off straight to hell, don’t pass go, don’t get $200, see ya never.”

Brad didn’t answer. He didn’t know what to say. Until a few weeks ago, he would have said that Nate looking run-down and regretful was all he wanted, but it turned out that Nate’s suffering was more satisfying in the abstract than in real life.

“I’m not saying I want you to be best friends with the guy, but as it happens, we owe him a debt. He had our backs, and it cost him. The least we can do is cover his six.”

“But why does it have to be  _ us? _ You’ve got a shitty track record of being friendly to people who did you dirty because you thrive on being a tragic martyr, and I live a thousand miles away. Can’t Stafford be on Fick babysitting duty?” 

Brad let the stupidity of that sentence hang in the air.

“Okay, fine. I wouldn’t let Stafford take care of my pet rock. But seriously, I’m your first choice for this mission? If Nate dicked you around, I’m not overly concerned if he’s got roaches or whatever the fuck.”

“Your concern for my welfare, while appreciated, is misplaced.”

“Sure, buddy, whatever you say.” 

Brad had always wondered how Ray managed to make eye rolls register so clearly through an auditory medium. He sighed.

“Ray, for the love of god, I didn’t ask you to marry him. Just make sure he’s not going to jump off a fucking bridge, will you?”

  
“Shit! You think he’s that fucked up? I’ll do what I can. But again,  _ a thousand miles away,  _ dude.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"[Louisa] fell on the pavement on the lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless! ... The horror of that moment to all who stood around. ... Anne, attending with all strength and zeal, and thought, which instinct supplied, tried , at intervals, to suggest comfort to the others....to animate Charles, to assuage the feelings of Captain Wentworth. Both seemed to look to her for directions."_
> 
> -Jane Austen, Persuasion

Nate’s favorite part of running was the bit a little bit more than halfway through when he tired enough that his thoughts narrowed down to the rush of air in and out of his lungs, the burning in his legs, and the beat of his feet against the pavement.

He was almost, but not quite, at that point when his knee gave way. A step landed wrong, his ankle twisted, and his knee collapsed. Or that’s how he remembered it later when he was piecing things together. At first, nothing registered except the shock of going from upright to sprawled across the sidewalk and the sting of his forearm and then his face scraping across the concrete.

Nate slowly lifted his head and felt around for the damage. He had some road rash on his chin and, yup, was bleeding from a scrape on his forehead. Fuck, that’d be fun to explain at the office. He lifted his right arm to look at the wreck he’d made of it. Even in the dark, he could see that he’d torn his shirt and his arm was bleeding from wrist to elbow. Gingerly, he extended the arm and rolled his wrist. It didn’t seem like he’d broken anything, just scraped it all to hell.

Relieved, Nate moved to get back to his feet and immediately regretted it. A dozen knives stabbed him in his left leg. He rolled slowly to his back, keeping his legs as stiff as possible, and lay there for a second, staring up at the sickly grey sky and trying to slow his breathing.

When he’d settled, Nate pulled himself into a sitting position and got out his phone. Flipping it open, he used the meager glow of the screen to examine his legs. As he’d expected, both knees were scratched below his shorts, but there weren’t any deep wounds. It was too early for swelling and too dark to see bruising, but only his left leg hurt when he moved it.

At least he’d still be able to drive. A nonsensical thought, given that he was at least a mile and a half away from his car, but comforting nonetheless. This whole situation was embarrassing enough. The last thing he needed was to have to bum rides everywhere.

He was a goddammed Recon Marine - training him had cost $1,000,000 as Brad was so fond of pointing out - and he’d been brought down by a sidewalk and his own two feet. It was humiliating. One more thing he couldn’t do right. Right now, his training was telling him to move, to get up and push through, finish the run, no matter what. Luckily, he had some semblance of common sense and pushed that instinct back.

The scrapes on his face were irritating, but not an issue. The bleeding from his arm was ruining his favorite shorts but otherwise not dangerous. The biggest problem at hand was his leg. He wasn’t sure if he’d fucked up his knee or his ankle, but his left leg was not going to enjoy the walk back to the car.

Nate looked around for something he could lean on, but it was too dark to really see anything, and, anyway, the fact that this park was well-maintained was one of the reasons he came here to run. The chances of him finding a stick large enough to use as a cane were next to nothing.

Cursing under his breath, Nate used his good arm and his good knee to twist himself upright without bending his left leg. It hurt like a bitch, but soon he was standing shakily on one leg, arms out for balance. 

Gritting his teeth, Nate took several shuffling lunging steps back the way he’d come. It was slow and painful, but it was forward movement. As long as he barely touched his foot to the ground, his leg would support his weight long enough for him to bring his other leg forward. The pain wasn’t worth mentioning; there was no way around that. He’d gone about ten feet when his leg crumpled beneath him without warning, nearly sending him sprawling back to the ground. 

Nate windmilled his arms to stay upright, and then stood, chest heaving, looking vaguely at the splatter of blood from his arm which now decorated the sidewalk in front of him. After a minute, he resumed his progress, setting a streetlight about twenty feet away as his goal. 

“Fucking sack-licking son of a bitch!”

This time Nate’d made it barely a few paces when his knee locked, shaking violently, and sending searing heat up through his hip. It hurt like a motherfucker, and more than that, it made it clear that whatever he’d done when he’d wrenched his leg, he was likely making it worse with every step.

Giving up on dignity, Nate sat back down and used his arms to propel himself backward. Using arms and his good leg, Nate scooted backward like an incredibly pathetic crab. The sidewalk scraped his legs, but at least he was moving. 

It took about a dozen humiliating minutes to get to the streetlight, and by the time he’d gotten there, his arms were aching. This was clearly not a viable solution to the situation. 

Sitting in the circle of light, Nate took his phone back out of his pocket. He really didn’t want to call Mike and tell him he’d fallen down and needed a ride. Mike’s lecture would last the full car ride and probably the rest of the week. 

He tried to think of who else he could call. Nate had picked up Stafford and Lilley and Stiney from any number of bars which closed after the taxis stopped running, and he’d once bailed all three of them out of jail when they’d decided the sand in the elementary school playground was comfy enough and had passed out there rather than continuing the walk back to base.

He could call them, but he still felt uncomfortable asking any of them for favors. He wasn’t their platoon commander anymore, but he had been, and he was still so much older than they were. It felt unbalanced. 

Besides, if he were to call any of them, they’d make a huge thing of it, insist on driving him to the ER. Christ, you never knew how far they’d go. They might call Mike themselves or worse, one of their mothers. Nate had been handed a phone to speak with Lilley’s mother once, and he’d like to avoid a repeat of that encounter. 

If only he could call Brad. Brad would come, even though he was pissed at Nate. He’d come and he’d handle the situation with a minimum of fuss. He’d pick Nate up and take him home and settle him with a washcloth and some aspirin and leave him to tend to his wounded knee and pride.

He was so fucking tired of having to do everything alone. He missed everything about Brad, but right now he keenly missed that feeling of having someone at his back. Someone he could talk things through with, someone who looked out for him. He had always been able to count on Brad for that. 

Maybe they’d talk. Maybe Brad would stay. Maybe he wouldn’t. Either way, Nate wouldn’t be sitting alone bleeding in a public park.

He looked around again in frustration. If he could just find something he could lean on for stability, he was sure he could make it back to his car and then he wouldn’t have to reach out to anyone.

The darkness was no more revealing than it had been the first time. There was nothing left to do but grit his teeth and call.

He pulled out his phone and cursed when he saw how late it was. Mike was going to be pissed if his call woke up the kids. Nate clicked through his contacts. He was into the M’s when he paused and clicked back up - the cursor hovered over Brad’s number. It wasn’t fair of him to ask, but Brad would come and he’d make it easy. 

Tears of frustration bit at Nate’s eyes. He wanted this whole shitty day to be over and he was just tired enough to not give a shit what Brad thought about him asking for one last thing if it meant he could be home. He went to click the contact number when a voice stopped him.

“Wow! Are you okay?” 

A middle-aged man walking a shaggy brown dog was crossing the grass towards him, and Nate was immediately pissed at himself for not marking his approach. 

“I’m fine,” Nate said automatically, “Just a few scrapes.”

“More than a few!” the guy said helpfully. Nate was prepared to brush him off when the shaggy dog darted in and licked furiously at Nate’s bleeding knee. 

“Josephine! No!” Her owner tugged her away while she scrabbled forward, trying to get back to her licking. “Sorry, she’s really friendly.”

“It’s okay,” Nate said, while he kept a wary eye on the dog, who looked eager for another taste of his blood. He wanted this guy to go away so that he could stop making polite small talk and go back to cursing his entire existence, but no such luck. 

Instead, the guy said, “I’m sorry about Josephine.  We live right over there. Why don’t you come with me and get cleaned up?”

“No, thank you,” Nate said desperately, “I’ll be alright in a minute.”

“C’mon,” the man insisted, “Josephine’s got all of her shots, but dog spit can’t be that sanitary.” He turned so that he could reach out a hand to Nate while keeping Josephine out of licking range. “I’m John.”

“Nate.” Defeated, Nate let John hoist him up, and then the three of them walked a few houses down to the grey duplex that John pointed out. It was awkward progress, with Nate leaning on John and John trying to keep Josephine from wrapping her leash around their ankles or jumping all over Nate again. Nate liked dogs, generally, but there was no way saliva was indicated in the wound care section of his first aid manual.

When they got to the front steps, John said, “Maybe you better wait here. Napoleon gets jealous.” Nate looked at the tiny black chihuahua, who was jumping and snarling behind the storm door and agreed that staying outside was for the best.

Alone except for the snarling muzzle behind him, Nate rested his head in his hands, and then immediately regretted it when his scraped palms and forehead objected. This was so humiliating. He’d known it was too dark for a run. He’d known that he should go home and get his headlamp, but he hadn’t because work had been exhausting and he was going to spend tomorrow night watching Brad fuck anything that moved, and he was so sick of all of this shit.

He’d just wanted to go on a nice head clearing run before he collapsed into bed, but no, instead he was sitting on a stranger’s stoop looking like an incredibly gruesome scarecrow.

John poked his head out of the door and asked, “Hey, do you live nearby?”

Wanting this over as soon as possible, Nate lied and said that he did. 

“Great, I’ll be right back.” John handed Nate a roll of paper towels and a dusty bottle of hydrogen peroxide and then ducked back inside.

Nate cleaned his hands and knees as best he could, making sure to be especially generous with the disinfectant in the spots where he’d gotten a bath from a dog. He didn’t even try to pull the blood-soaked shirt out of the cuts on his forearm, he just wrapped paper towels around it. Not much he could do there until he had more light. He was dabbing delicately at the scrapes on his forehead when John came back out with a pair of crutches.

“My son used these when he tore his ACL playing soccer,” John said, holding the crutches out to Nate. “They might be a bit small, but they should get you home.”

They were definitely intended for someone shorter than Nate, but they’d get him back to his car. He took them gratefully.

“These are great, thank you,” Nate said, using the crutches to push himself into a standing position. The handles had blue terry cloth duct taped to them for padding, but they were filthy, so it didn’t seem like John would mind if he got some blood on them. “I’ll bring them back tomorrow.”

“No need!” John said cheerfully, “He’ll never miss them, and my wife’s always after me to clean out the basement.”

He winked and Nate smiled despite himself, “Glad I was able to be of assistance. Thank you again.”

“You’re welcome! Stay safe!”

Nate waved and then headed down the street. He hadn’t been on crutches since high school, but the movement came back fairly quickly, and Nate limped back up the road to his car and the end of this shitty day.

The next day wasn’t any better. If anything, it was worse. Everyone from his next-door neighbor to strangers on the street winced at his bruised face, and even though the receptionist was warning all of the clients before their meetings with him, more than one of them visibly recoiled when they walked through the door.

The worst part was his knee. He kept it elevated as much as possible and used John’s son’s crutches, but even still, by the end of the day, his knee was so swollen that even though he was wearing his loosest dress pants, they were stretched tight. He headed to the walk-in clinic after work, where he waited for ninety frustrating minutes, during which everyone who walked past shot him an annoyed glance at his outstretched leg as if he were taking up all of this space deliberately to antagonize them.

One MRI and a lecture about not waiting so long to get things checked out later, Nate left with a diagnosis (torn meniscus), properly sized crutches, and a referral for an orthopedic surgeon. He was to wear a knee brace and alternate heat and ice for two weeks until the swelling went down and then get a follow-up MRI in a month to see if the tear was healing on his own or if he’d need surgery. Fanfuckingtastic. 

Nate was home and settled on the couch before everything fully sank in, and when it did, it hurt as badly as smacking into the sidewalk. A follow-up appointment. Possible surgery. He wasn’t going to be able to run for  _ weeks. _

Even as he bit his lip to fight back the tears rising in his throat, he knew he was overreacting. It was just exercise. He could find something else to do while he was laid up. 

But running was the one thing he still felt like he was good at, and it was the one place where he was free from the bullshit in his head. It was his pressure release, and it had been taken from him for the foreseeable future. Not to mention all the shit he was going to get for being taken down by a goddamn sidewalk for fuck’s sake. Nate leaned his head back on the couch. He was so tired; he just wanted one instance where things went his way. Just one.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage...She understood him. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief. It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed._  
>  ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

When Brad stepped out of his truck at Stafford’s apartment, the first thing he saw was Nate, on crutches, laughing at something Garza was saying. 

Why the fuck was he here? It seemed like common sense that you didn’t invite officers to events where the entire point was to be a shitshow, but nevertheless, here they were, gathered together to consolidate rides before Stiney’s bachelor party, and here Nate was, apparently planning on joining them despite his recent run-in with the pavement.

Brad tried not to stare too obviously at the bruises on his face and the brace on his knee. The grapevine had filled Brad in on Nate’s injury, but they’d been fuzzy on the details. A running accident. A little over a week ago. Nate was fine and probably didn’t (or actually didn’t, the grapevine wasn’t entirely clear) need surgery.

He’d had to hear it from Lilley of all fucking people. Not that he expected Nate to keep him up on the details of his life, but how the fuck was Lilley getting news before Brad was? (Answer: Because Lilley texted Nate pretty much every fucking day, and Nate was too polite to tell him to fuck off. Just because there was a reasonable explanation didn’t mean Brad wasn’t pissed about it.)

The worst part was that Brad had been with Poke and Mike and a few of the others when Lilley had come in, trying and failing not to look utterly thrilled that he had intel they didn’t. The news had been just as surprising to them as it was to him, which meant that, after Nate had fallen while running, he had almost definitely done something phenomenally stupid to get home.

Brad had wanted to bark at Lilley to get out his phone and get answers. How had Nate gotten home? How bad was the knee injury? How long was it going to be until Nate could run again? 

Brad was surprised that Mike wasn’t more concerned, but he just muttered something about Nate running at night as if being a little reckless meant he deserved it. At Brad’s raised eyebrow, Mike shook his head. “He’s got a fucking headlamp, but he doesn’t wear it. Christ, he’s going to be pissy as all shit if he needs surgery and can’t run for a while.” 

Brad wasn’t impressed with Mike’s priorities, and Mike must have read it on him because he got a mulish look on his face and said, 

“I tried to get him to wear the thing. He’s a fucking nightmare if he thinks he’s being handled. It’s easier to save it for the big things.”

“And proper protective gear isn’t one of the big things? He’s going to get hit by a fucking car.”

Mike shrugged. “Try telling him that.”

“Try telling Nate anything-” Brad started to say, before remembering that Mike had successfully convinced Nate to walk away from him despite what had felt, to him, like a truly happy relationship. From the look on Mike’s face, he was remembering that too.

Luckily, Qtip chose that moment to arrive with a very loud “What up, bitches?” which spared either of them the necessity of continuing that line of thought. Lilley brought Stafford up to date and the conversation turned to the bachelor party, and whether or not Nate’s injury meant they needed to change their plans. 

Brad stood there in the bar and tried not to think of Nate falling, of Nate in pain, of Nate alone in the dark. Nate wouldn’t have called him - that wasn’t who they were to each other anymore. But he should have. He had to know that, even now, Brad would have come.

Standing in Stafford’s driveway, Brad felt the same gorge rise in his stomach. From across the yard, Nate looked even younger than usual, and whether it was the slightly hunched posture the crutches gave him or the fact that they required him to be still, Brad didn’t know, but he looked small. It all combined to create a jarring sense that Nate was in the wrong place.

Brad tried to redirect his focus. Nate wasn’t his concern. Mike was here, and nothing got him hard faster than having Nate to fawn all over; plus, Lilley drooled every time Nate so much as looked in his direction, so Nate’s ass was well covered. He didn’t need or want Brad’s attention.

Despite his resolution, Brad’s eyes kept tracking to where Nate stood on the stoop to Qtip’s apartment building. He stood out among the rambunctious crowd gathered there, a still, pale stripe in the shoal of Marines. No matter how hard Brad tried to distract himself, he found himself watching Nate while they all waited for Stafford and Christeson to finish whatever scheme they’d devised to sneak liquor into the ballpark. 

Nate shouldn’t be here. He looked like a goddamned mess and it was clear even to Brad that he didn’t have much leisure time as it was, so why was he spending it dragging his bruised and torn carcass in and out of cars and up and down stairs instead of parking his ass on the couch like he was supposed to? Brad couldn’t believe Mike was allowing this. 

The longer they waited to leave, the more annoyed Brad got - at Stafford for holding them up, at Nate for having no common sense, at himself for caring what Nate did.

When the general hubbub began to move in the general direction of the parked cars, Brad watched Nate maneuver his way down the front steps by placing his crutches on the step below and hopping himself down after. He clearly didn’t have a lot of practice, and he almost overbalanced twice. Surely, someone would step in now, before the idiot tore all the ligaments in his other leg or smashed his face on the pavement again.

But no one did, and Brad’s patience for watching Nate’s high wire act had worn out before Nate had gone down more than three stairs. With quick paces, Brad closed the distance between them, and without asking, placed his hands around Nate’s waist and lifted him down the remaining stairs. 

Under his hands, Nate took a sharp breath and then went perfectly still. For a second, Brad was entirely lost to sensation - the familiar feeling of Nate’s warmth soaking through his shirt to Brad’s palm, the irritating softness of his grown-out hair brushing against Brad’s cheek. He still smelled the same. 

What the fuck was that about? When was Nate going to stop feeling like the safest thing in Brad’s universe, when he so very clearly wasn’t?

This was why hookers were the answer. Brad paid them for a service, even for temporary companionship if that was what he wanted, and then they left, transaction complete. If they were good at their jobs, and Brad chose people who were, he never saw or interacted with them again. You didn’t end up spinning a prostitute around in the middle of a sunny March afternoon in a mockery of a scene from a bullshit romance. But instead he’d let himself get blown away by the force of nature that was Nate Fick and he was still finding unexpected damage all this time later.

As soon as Nate was steady on the ground, Brad turned away, unwilling to see the look on Nate’s face. Nothing Nate might be feeling was safe for Brad to deal with right now. Ignoring the electric reaction of his own skin to Nate’s touch, Brad stalked back to his truck and got behind the wheel. 

This entire fucking situation was too goat-fucked for words. Why was Nate always around and why did no one else seem to notice that he looked about one blow away from falling apart? Why was it still somehow Brad’s responsibility keep Nate whole? He wasn’t too proud to admit that Nate’s decision to leave him had shattered him, but he’d put himself back together (with no help from any of these assholes) and he’d succeeded and now he was back here, in this place, and Nate kept getting thrown back in his face. 

Brad wouldn’t have left fucking Encino Man to navigate those stairs with a bum leg, and despite how he felt about Nate, he still valued him above a useless sack of shit like Encino Man.

Brad didn’t want to focus on Nate, he wanted Nate to leave him alone so he could focus on whatever was coming next for him, or on getting excessively drunk at this baseball game or whatever he wanted because Nate wasn’t supposed to be in his life anymore.

✦

Nate still couldn’t quite believe that it had happened. He’d been focusing on getting down the stairs without embarrassing himself, and, suddenly, he’d been in the air, and before he could adjust to that, he was solidly planted on the ground again. His stomach dropped thinking of it. Brad had touched him. Brad had not just touched him but lifted him, and Nate had been too surprised to even treasure the nearness of him. It wasn’t fair.

Brad had noticed that Nate needed help when no one else had. Brad, who barely acknowledged him except to make acid comments about his civilian status and his entry-level job.

Nate tried not to let it mean anything to him; after all, Brad’s caretaking was practically compulsive. Ray still claimed that the mid-tour arrival of a fresh Hustler had been the best present he’d ever gotten, and that was just a small example of Brad thinking ahead so he could take care of his people. 

Still, Nate was exhausted and each new inconvenient thing seemed to send him into a hole which it took him hours to climb out of, and, while it was embarrassing that Brad kept being the one around when he struggled, he couldn’t feel anything but grateful for every helping hand, and, if he were being honest, it did mean something to him that it was Brad.

Nate studiously didn’t watch Brad walk away, instead focusing on navigating his way down the path and towards Mike’s car. It had been hard to get over someone when he’d never meant to break up with him in the first place. It was harder now that Brad was here and happy and being kind to him. 

When Brad and Nate had gotten together after OIF, they’d brought to it the same intensity they’d brought to all of their previous interludes. Objectively, Nate had known that it looked impulsive and out-of-character from the outside, but moving in with Brad directly after getting together with him hadn’t felt headlong. It felt right.   
  
At the time, Nate had had no idea what the next step was in his career, if he could remain with the Marines, if he even wanted to. He didn’t know how to be a Marine stateside anymore, and he had even less of an idea of how to be a civilian if that was where his decisions took him. He’d been doubting himself and every decision he’d made before and during his tour, but he’d never had any doubts about Brad. This relationship was against regs and had to be kept a secret, and it was still the easiest thing in his life.   
  
Looking back, Nate could admit that his subsequent decisions hadn’t been as healthy. Mike had had grounds for his concern, he’d merely been wrong about the cause.   
  
Mike had been right that Nate when he said it was time for Nate to get his head on straight. He’d been right when he accused Nate of building a life with no foundation and no plan. He’d been right when he said that Nate’s attitude was going to alienate a lot of people and that if he weren’t careful, he’d find a lot of doors slamming in his face when he came back around.    
  
Mike had thought that Nate was pushing against inconsequential decisions and turning an acid tongue on everyone who disagreed with him because he was angry that he had to hide his relationship with Brad. That Nate was showing up half-prepared for meetings because he was too wrapped up in Brad to care about anything else. Mike thought that Nate was living with Brad because he was arrogant enough to think that he could do whatever he wanted.   
  
Nate had let him because he hadn’t really known what was going on himself, and he hadn’t wanted to look too closely. He hadn’t wanted to face the half-formed awareness growing in his consciousness that he and his men had been ill-used by their government. He wasn’t ready to admit that the “funk” he’d been in since they’d gotten back was probably something diagnosable and wasn’t going to pass on its own. He couldn’t articulate, even to himself, that he was living with Brad because he cared more about Brad than he did his career with the Marines.   
  
When Mike had asked him out for a drink and told him, with all his usual tact, that Nate’s relationship with Brad was fucking up his life, Nate had been angry and ready to storm out. When Mike continued and said that their relationship was fucking up Brad’s life, Nate had sat back down to listen.

  
He’d stewed for days, avoiding the apartment, taking long runs and trying to stay out until he could expect Brad to be asleep. If he could go back, the way he’d imagined a thousand times when he couldn’t sleep, he’d do it all differently. The night that Brad had waited up for him, he would have been honest, confessed that Mike had rattled him, that he was afraid of what their future would bring.   
  
Instead, he’d been so convinced that he was a weight around Brad’s neck pulling him down into a morass of failure that he’d evaded and been vague and Brad had jumped to all of the wrong conclusions.    
  
Nate had been trying to articulate that he was a mess and a disaster for Brad’s career, but he hadn’t been trying to break up with him. That would have been like giving up a life preserver when he was drowning.    
  
But Brad had heard Nate making polite evasions and talking about the difficulty of the future and the shutters had come down behind his eyes. Brad had called him a coward and even now, Nate had to admit that he was right. If he’d been willing to try harder, he probably could have explained, but instead, he’d accepted it as his due and left the apartment, and Brad had gone off to his next posting, and he hadn’t come back to Oceanside since.

A few weeks after Brad had left, Nate had gotten his shit together enough to email Brad and apologize. He’d tried to explain his doubts about his long-term career in the Marines, and how it wasn’t fair that he could disregard how their relationship would affect his career when it was make-or-break for Brad. He’d told Brad that he genuinely hadn’t wanted to break up and that Brad was sometimes the only thing that made sense to him. He’d asked for a second chance.

There had been no response.

And now Brad had lifted Nate down the stairs and walked away as if it didn’t matter. Because he would have done it for anybody. Because it didn’t mean anything to him that it was Nate.  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _... some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear._  
>  ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

Brad didn’t believe in his mother’s god, but he fully believed that this afternoon was specifically designed to punish him for his sins. He’d bribed the assholes riding in his truck to stop talking about his figure skating move with Nate by offering to buy the first round. By the time he’d made his way to their section with their beer, everyone had mostly settled into their seats, with the exception of Garza and Jacks who were doing some sort of standing cheer, and because the world was a cruel and unforgiving place, the seat they’d left for him was the second one in the row, next to Nate who had the end because of his injury.

Brad didn’t give Nate a chance to stand, just took one ungainly step over his legs and busied himself with passing beers down the row. Not that it helped. The seats in this stadium didn’t even have enough leg space for a pygmy goat like Trombley, much less for actual adult-sized human beings like him and Nate.

The angle Nate had arranged himself in to keep his leg straight and mostly out of the aisle meant that his right leg was practically plastered to Brad, and there wasn’t any place Brad could move to avoid it unless he wanted to sit on Stafford’s lap, which he decidedly did not.

Eventually, he ran out of plausible reasons to be turned down the row, and he settled back in his seat to watch the game, uncomfortably aware of Nate sitting stiffly in his peripheral vision, right knee pressed into Brad’s thigh.

For two and a half innings, Brad sat staring straight ahead, pretending to watch the pathetic excuse for baseball being executed on the field below. He tried to ignore Nate quietly shifting in the seat next to him, presumably looking for a position that didn’t strain or hurt his knee. The spot where their legs were pressed together prickled with sweat, but Brad ignored that too.

Their friends weren’t complete wastes of space, so they knew better than to try to make Nate stand every time they needed to leave the row for beer or dollar hot dogs or whatever else they deemed necessary for proper baseball enjoyment. No matter how close to Brad and Nate they were, the guys turned and headed for the other aisle. However, this had the unfortunate side effect of creating a small island of only Brad and Nate at the end of their row. Attention and conversation were directed down the row away from them, and Brad and Nate were left sitting in profoundly uncomfortable silence.

When Stafford jumped up to cheer (at nothing as far as Brad could tell,) he kicked the crutches tucked underneath their seats and they swung forward and whacked Brad and Nate in the back of the legs. Brad and Nate both jumped, and Brad ducked down to return them to their place. When he sat up, Nate’s face was pale with pain under the sun flush, but Nate saw him notice and waved him away.

Brad was so pissed at Nate for being there when he should so clearly be in bed, that he almost let it go, but Nate bit his lip as he looked away, and it was a gesture so achingly familiar that Brad couldn’t help but respond.

  
Unfortunately, pissed was still Brad’s prevailing mood, so what he ended up saying was “If you insist on sitting there maiming yourself for the dubious pleasure of seeing these Giants wannabes fail to play baseball, can I at least get you some ice to offset the damage?”  
  
Nate's head reared back and he snapped, “I'm sorry, are you speaking to me now? What did I do to earn such a gracious concession?”  
  
Christ, but he could be snotty when he wanted to. Slowly, as if he were responding to a child or to Ray, Brad said, “I wasn't aware I was ever not speaking to you.”

“Your performance at Stafford’s has everyone speculating on what I did to deserve your wrath.”

“My performance?” It took a lot of nerve for Nate to be such a bitch about receiving a literal helping hand. “I’m not sure which part of keeping you from smashing your head on the fucking pavement is being interpreted as anger.”

“It’s less the help down the stairs, and more about the part where you stalked across the lawn as if I’d just insulted your grandmother, your warrior spirit, and Chesty Puller in one breath.”

Brad turned back to the baseball game and didn’t acknowledge what Nate had said. If Nate didn’t understand why Brad couldn’t stand there and make inane small talk when his arms had just been around Nate...but Nate’s temper was apparently at its fraying point, because he continued,

“Because of your complete inability to behave normally, I’ve got to deal with Garza asking if I poached your favorite hooker.”

Brad had never had any trouble shutting down inappropriate questions because he had no hesitation about telling his friends to shut the fuck up (or failing that, bribing them with beer), but that had never been Nate’s way. He vaguely felt bad for whatever ribbing Nate had to take during the car ride.

“What did you tell him?”

“That I had no idea what was wrong with you, but I would never dream of messing with the highly-trained professionals you pay to deal with the stick up your ass because then we’d have to deal with more of your stopped up shit flowing out of your mouth.”

Brad almost smiled. It was a good answer. Not that he expected that Garza had followed half of it. Nate’s wit was wasted on these yahoos.

“Now that we’ve established, via this very enriching conversation, that I am in fact talking to you, as I am an adult and not a prepubescent girl and you did not steal my date to the Spring Formal, can I get you some ice for your knee before you chew your lip raw pretending it isn’t bothering you?”

Nate snorted and shook his head. “As glad as I am to hear that your Spring Formal plans are unharmed, I didn’t need your help on the stairs.”

Brad ignored him, focusing on the objective at hand, “Nate. Ice?”

Nate grimaced, “It won’t help, but thanks. It’s not the position, it’s the lateral movement.”

“Can you take something?”

“Already did. Don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”

Brad didn’t think he was, but he was running up against the new constraints on his relationship with Nate. He didn’t have any other suggestions, so he stayed silent.

Oddly, now that the ice had been broken and he could talk to Nate, sitting next to him was even more difficult. There was no reason to sit in silence, but what would Brad say? What safe ground could possibly exist between them?

Brad watched the pitcher blow a 2-1 count and walk the batter. He tried not to think about the sun beating down on him, on Nate sitting next to him. He needed another beer, but he didn’t want to have to bother Nate to get out.

After a while, Nate said, “I don’t think they’re Giants.”

“What?”

“This team isn’t in the farm system for the Giants. I think these are wannabe Mets.”

“Oh yes,” Brad said drily, “That is a very important distinction. I’m so glad you brought it to my attention.”

“Precision of language,” Nate said primly, “is the first step to a disciplined mind."

Caught off guard, Brad laughed, and when he looked at Nate, Nate’s face was lit by an electric grin that caused Brad’s heart to slam into his throat. It had been a long time since Nate had looked at him like that, but the tug of longing and warmth in the pit of Brad’s stomach was as familiar as if he’d never been away.

Nate turned away, and with the disconcerting way he had of reading Brad’s mind at unexpected moments, he flagged down the beer seller and ordered two. He handed one to Brad and then, to Brad’s surprise, leaned over and knocked Stafford’s knee with the other.

“Yo, thanks! Gimme that juice!”

Brad ignored the mumbo jumbo that made up half of Stafford’s vocabulary and asked Nate, “None for you?”

“Alcohol and prescription strength ibuprofen is a combination sure to devastate my liver according to my doctor.”

Brad couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’re at a bachelor party with these idiots and you aren’t going to drink. How the fuck do you expect to survive the night?”

Nate smiled a little and then, with the equally disconcerting way he had of missing Brad’s fucking point, he said quietly, “Sorry for crashing your friend group. Stiney asked and I didn’t want to say no.”

“I don’t give a flying fuck what you do or don’t do with _your_ friends, I just think that spending hours with these morons is difficult enough when they aren’t trying to get shitfaced. I cannot imagine being sober around them when they’re sloppy drunk.”

Nate laughed and said only, “You’re such a good friend.”

“The fact that I am even at this sorry excuse for a social event is better than these miscreants deserve and you fucking know it.”

Stafford, who’d apparently been listening, shouted, “Yo, Stine-ay! Colbert thinks he’s too good for your party.”

Four or five suggestions as to where exactly Brad could fuck off were shouted down the row by various Marines. Poke added that if Brad needed something to do, he could get on his knees and make himself useful. At least three strangers in nearby rows flinched.

They made it through three more innings without further incident. Brad made a few comments about the shitty pitching. Nate blamed it on the manager, who might well have been asleep, given his lack of response to the pitcher going off the rails. Nate’s leg was still pressed to Brad’s but they were both so hot that it had long since stopped being anything other than an unfortunate necessity. It was almost normal.

Almost normal, until Nate leaned forward into Brad’s personal space and Brad startled as if he’d been stabbed. Nate jumped back, wrenching his leg in the process, which caused him to grunt with pain before biting back what else he would have said if Brad wasn’t next to him.

They stared at each other wide-eyed for a moment, neither of them sure how to react.

“I need...I...sorry, I need my crutches.”

It was a sign of how thrown Brad was that it took him a second to even grasp what Nate meant.

When he did, he said “What do you need? I can get it for you.”

Nate raised a brow. It was remarkable how superior he could manage to look even with mottled yellow bruises spreading across his forehead.

“I can manage on my own, thanks.”

Brad would have protested, but Nate sent him a quelling look.

“I’m not completely incapable. And it’ll be good to stand for a minute.”

“At least let me help you on the stairs.”

Nate frowned, but he couldn’t get to his crutches until Brad moved his legs, so he merely rolled his eyes and nodded. Together they retrieved Nate’s crutches from under their seats, and Brad walked behind Nate as he made his way up to the concourse.

Nate was better at going up the stairs than down them, which was a small relief, but Brad kept his eyes glued to Nate’s feet all the way until Nate was back on level ground. Nate wasn’t going to wipe out again; not on Brad’s watch.

Brad was so concerned with Nate’s balance that it wasn’t until they’d been standing awkwardly just past the top of the stairs for a few seconds that he realized that he’d pushed too far into unknown territory without an exit strategy.

Nate was standing there, clearly waiting for Brad to get on with whatever he was going to do next, and Brad was standing there like a fool, as if he were going to follow Nate. Stupid. He was here because he was concerned about Nate’s safety, not because they were going to hang out.

For the first time in the history of baseball, the long concession lines were going to work out in someone’s favor. “I’m going to get a beer. Do you want a water or something?”

“No, thanks,” Nate smiled and moved on his crutches off into the crowd. Brad didn’t even pretend not to watch him go.

After the game was over, Brad was pleased to see Nate make the sensible choice and go home rather than joining them out at the bars. Nate needed to be on his couch. He might say that he was fine, but Brad could see the pinched look around his eyes that meant he was fighting off a headache.

Besides, not wanting to disappoint Stiney was understandable, but the groom-to-be was already completely hammered, and he wasn’t going to remember anything much past this point anyway.

As Nate said his goodbyes and headed to find a taxi, Garza walked up to Brad and asked, “Where’s the LT going? Home to his wife?”

Brad sloshed beer over the edge of his plastic cup.

Noticing his reaction, Poke said “That’s what he calls Nate’s job. Because his boss is a fucking nag. Even Alicia doesn’t call me as much when I’m out as Nate’s boss does.”

Pappy snorted, “Yeah, and she only calls because she knows what kind of fucked up shit you get into unsupervised. Nate’s boss just fucking hates him.”

“Why does he still work there?”

Poke shook his head. “Why does white boy do any of the things he does? C’mon, let’s get the fuck out of here. I have to be home in four hours, and I am not nearly drunk enough.”

Garza, ever well-meaning, turned to Brad as they headed off and said, “The LT’s not really married though. Like, to anyone, I mean.”

Brad pretended not to hear him. Nate’s relationship status was of no interest to him, and he wasn’t going to let Garza think otherwise.

Much to his chagrin, Brad wasn’t done embarrassing himself over Nate. Towards the end of the night, after pouring Marines into various busses and cars, Brad sat in the back of a cab staring out at the strange new-oldness of Oceanside and thinking about Nate.

Their apartment was up three flights of stairs, no elevator, and there wasn’t anyone waiting for Nate to make sure that he was okay. Not that he wanted there to be. He’d just. Figured that there would be. Since it had been so long. Since it was Nate.

Brad didn’t hold the people of Oceanside in the highest esteem, but they weren’t all pigshit stupid. One of them must have noticed Nate somewhere, sometime. There should have been someone waiting for Nate making sure that he ate something tonight other than a stadium hot dog.

Most of the Marines of Brad’s acquaintance had skipped enough meals out of necessity that mealtimes were serious business when they were stateside. Brad himself was more of the “food as fuel” school of thought, but even he found himself paying more attention when he was home. After all, home had his mom’s Tri-tip.

Nate, on the other hand, tended to forget food entirely when it wasn’t set down directly in front of him and sometimes even when it was.

Shortly after they’d returned from Operation Iraqi Clusterfuck, Brad had planned a day-long ride, hoping the thrumming of the bike would beat the ache from his bones. He’d gotten out an old helmet so that he could tuck Nate at his back. It had been a good day. The weight of Nate against his back was almost as steadying as the rush of the wind in his face.

They’d stopped more often than they needed, so he could listen to Nate tell him the history of conquests and schemes that had shaped this land. Every time, Brad had offered water and snacks from the bags, and every time, Nate had accepted the water and declined to share whatever Brad was eating, caught up in the scenery, his stories, in Brad, if truth be told.

It wasn’t until late in the afternoon, when they were on the way back, that Brad caught Nate frowning against a headache and realized that he hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. He had a fond memory of the look on Nate’s face when Brad had handed him a protein bar and Nate’d realized that he was hungry.

After that, Brad had stopped asking and started handing Nate whatever he deemed appropriate. As long as it didn’t interfere with what Nate was doing, Nate would accept it and eat it absently, usually without noticing. Sometimes, he’d look up at Brad with laughing eyes, as if it were Brad who’d just been caught doing something embarrassing.

Nate had allowed Brad to buy him a hot dog as a thank you for the beer, so at least he’d eaten something tonight. He’d accepted and then, without looking at Brad, handed over his unused relish packets, because he’d remembered how Brad liked his dogs. Brad didn’t want to think about whether or not Nate’s memories of him were equally fond.

They’d almost had fun tonight. He looked like shit. For the rest of Brad’s life, he’d insist to Ray, to himself, to anyone who would have asked, that it was the second thought and not the first that had him taking out his phone and texting Ray.   

_You said you were going to help him._

**_???????_ **

_You know what I mean._

  ** _Pretty much never, dude. It’s what keeps our relationship fresh and exciting._**

_I know that there is nothing you hold sacred in this world but would you please find somethng to read that isn’t your mother’s Women’s Day magazines_

**_you don’t know me_ **

**_I hold lots of things sacred Blow jobs, pizza, AC, gas station corn dogs_ **

_I apologize for insulting your deeply held beliefs in oral sex and disgusting food but rleigious inclinationss aside I asked you tp help Nate_

The cab arrived at Brad’s and Brad paid the man and let himself into his apartment, dropping his phone and keys on the bookcase as he got himself water and changed. Brad remembered his phone when it buzzed with Ray’s missed call. He didn’t bother to pick up, but he did read through the string of texts Ray had sent.

**_It’s like 9pm there how did you get drunk enough to be misspelling things already?_ **

**_don’t be pissy i won’t tell anyone you’re a lightweight_ **

**_or that you’re curshing on fick_ **

**_Come on bro i’m sorry i insulted your warrior spirit or whatever the fuck i am sure you drank many manly beers_ **

 Brad snorted at Ray’s version of apologizing but read genuine concern in the messages.

  _You’re such an utter disaster on nights out that your comments on my drinking prowess or lack thereof are irrelevant and could not insult me even if that was what you were trying to do. The bachelor party was tonight and I’m merely following up on something you promised me you’d do._

**_ican’t believe ur bachelor party drunk and still using your fancy words_ **

**_it’s fucked up_ **

**_This is why people think your a robot_** ****

_You’re_

**_but i know better bc i know u probably started a college account for your hosebeast ex-fiances demon spawn and now you’re hovering over nate fucking fick like a nervois hen_ **

_He’s hurt_

_And he went to that shithole ballpark and dragged his stubborn ass up and down four flights of stairs_

**_i know that you are socially stunted and the corps still have ur balls + ur brain in a vice_ **

**_but even u should know thait is my job as your best friend to hate your ex_ **

  _You’re not my best friend_

**_don’t be a dick, of course I am_ **

_He’s going to fuck his knee up even worse than before because he won’t admit that he needs help. Stiney understands he didn;t have to come._  

**_what the fuck do you want me to do about it_ **

**_i texted him he said he was fine_ **

_he’s not. He’s working too hard and he never asks for anything and all of these idiots act like he’s indetructable and take ahwtever they need and don’t remember to pay attention to what he needs and he deserves better than that. Someone needs to take care of him,._

There was a long delay before Ray responded. Brad took that opportunity to drink more of his water and lay down on the couch.

**_you are going to hate yourself and me when you read this in the morning_ **

**_pleaze do not express your anger thrugh the mail again_ **

**_my mother has still not recovered_ **

**_i’ll think og something ok? I got your six_ **

Brad tossed his phone in the direction of the coffee table and heard it skid off and onto the carpet. He closed his eyes. That, like Ray’s texts, was a tomorrow problem.

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Everybody’s heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health.”_  
>  ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

The day of Nate’s follow up doctor’s appointment was grey and cloudy, but Nate would have found a way to get there even if there were an actual monsoon. He was making it to that appointment and getting cleared to exercise again. Then he was going to take the crutches out to the alley behind his apartment and douse them in lighter fluid, toss the match and cleanse himself of this awful period.

Nate had been afraid that Caplan would invent an emergency to keep him in the office. In fact, he’d had to delicately find ways to work the ADA into conversations to get his boss to stop bitching about him taking the time off, but once that hurdle had been cleared, it had all been smooth sailing.

He was sitting in the exam room waiting for the results of his scans when he got a text from Ray. Unexpected, but not unheard of. He opened the message with some trepidation. Ray worked swing shifts, so it was impossible to know what hours were going to bring drunk texts from him.

**_I think I should get a lizard. did you know some of those motherfuckers can swim?_ **

_No, they can’t. Also, hello._

**_they can so I saw it on PBS last night. They’re like scaly spiky dolphins. Dumb as shit tho. they have brains the size of walnuts. i could name it rummy after the fucking moron who sent us to iraq_ **

_At least check with the pet store that you’ve got the right kind before you drown some unsuspecting creature_.

Nate put his phone down, determined not to encourage Ray, but after half-a-second, he gave in and picked it back up.

_I don’t think that’s fair to lizards. Rumsfeld’s more like a particularly stupid lichen._

**_Point._ **

**_maybe i’ll get two and name them bill and ted. Lizards are super chill with time travel_ **

_I’m starting to think you dreamed this entire PBS special you allegedly watched._

**_Whatever, dude, I know what I know._ **

**_can I crash with you for a couple of nights around Stiney’s wedding? I might try to see some peeps while I’m on that half of the contintent_ **

Nate frowned at his phone in surprise. Ray had never asked to stay with him before. Ray had no shortage of friends in Oceanside.

_Of course. You don’t want to stay with Brad?_

**_Fuck no. That motherfucker snores like motherfucking bigfoot._ **

He didn’t. Nate knew that as a fact. He stared at the cheerful woman in the ad for arthritis medicine across from him and wondered exactly what the fuck Ray was up to. Further questions wouldn't help - Nate knew that if he asked, Ray would simply stop answering.

_You’re welcome to stay with me, but that’s very obviously horseshit._

_You want to tell me what’s going on?_

**_nope_ **

_Okay. Let me know the details once you have your travel booked._

Another day, another moment spent contemplating the mysteries of Ray Person. Nate wished he could text Brad and ask him what was up with Ray, but that was obviously out of the question. Things had thawed somewhat in the weeks since the baseball game, but that didn’t mean things were comfortable.

It was clear that Brad couldn’t forgive him for his past mistakes, but it seemed like Brad was over being pissed off by Nate’s mere existence. They’d never be able to be what they once were to each other, but Nate had been right. There was respect enough there and common ground for them to build a civil relationship.

Possibly, with enough time, they might be friends again. Maybe a day would come when Nate would be able to text Brad about Ray without thinking about it.

Nate could see the path right in front of him. A way to have Brad in his life again. Genuinely, not whatever facade of normalcy they were working on right now. And he knew he had to turn away. He couldn’t take it. It fucking sucked.

Maybe someday he’d be strong enough that he could see Brad without something jumping in his chest, but he wasn’t. Not yet. Brad couldn’t forgive him, and Nate wasn’t over him, so Nate had to move on. Trying to be friends with Brad would surely lead to Nate breaking his own heart or doing something humiliating like confessing his feelings and pissing Brad off again.

Brad had every reason not to trust Nate, and even if he could, why should he take the risk? Brad was brilliant, gorgeous and successful. He could have his pick of partners, and he should. He deserved someone who could support him and make his life better, not an ex who would, by necessity, be a secret and often a long-distance one at that? What could Nate possibly offer him that would be worth that sacrifice?

Nate’s doctor came in with his results, and all thoughts of Brad were forgotten. No surgery and Nate was going to be able to move again. Nothing too strenuous and certainly no running, but he could abandon the fucking crutches and go back to his gym. Nate couldn't stop smiling. This was the best news he'd had in ages.

He scheduled his final follow up and practically skipped out of the doctor's office, crutches mercifully tucked under one arm.Having his feet back on solid ground (literally) was energizing in a way he hadn’t expected. He felt like himself for the first time in a long time. The sky was still spitting rain, but as he walked to his car, he felt like he was taking his victory march.

Nate took out his phone to share the good news with his parents and saw he had a missed text from Caplan.  
  
_Need you back in The office as Soon as your appt is done! A lot To do on Morales defense!_  
  
Nate had taken the whole afternoon off for the appointment, with the vague idea that he could get caught up on dishes, maybe make it to the gym if he were cleared to do so. Going in was the path of least resistance, and part of Nate rebelled against that on principle. He was a Marine, for Christ’s sake.

He weighed the peace of mind he'd get from being caught up on chores against the shitstorm he'd have to face tomorrow if he didn't go in and texted

_I'll be there in 45_

 Now that he had his mood up, it was time to revisit the idea of leaving this job. Brad had said he didn’t recognize him, and Nate had to begrudgingly admit that there was some truth to that. But there didn’t have to be. Not anymore.

✦

Caplan wasn’t in the office when Nate got there, which was both a blessing and a curse. Caplan’s absence usually made things work more smoothly, but Nate had wanted to ask him why they were focusing on the Morales defense when the Balko matter was scheduled to go to court next week.

Daniel, the other associate, couldn’t tell him anything except that Caplan left his notes on the Morales file on Nate’s desk. Nate worked steadily through the corrections that Caplan had asked him to make for a few hours, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

  
Usually, this close to taking a case to trial, Caplan would be riding Nate over every single comma, period and semicolon in his brief, and screaming in and out of Nate’s office with more citations for Nate to research. The weeks before cases were also the only time Caplan ever worked late - since he was the only one who could actually present in court, he had to familiarize himself with every single thing Nate had previously done.

If the Balko case were going to trial, he should have been in the office. Nate should have been working on that file and not on the Morales case. Nate had a sinking feeling that they weren’t going to trial, and that Caplan had convinced the clients to accept a deal instead of going to court.

Settling wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Oftentimes, it was a way to get acceptable outcomes for both parties without the hassle of a trial. The problem was that, in this case, the clients had text messages proving that the only reason their landlord had kicked them out was because they had a baby, which was illegal in California. The clients qualified for anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in damages and Nate couldn’t see any rental company agreeing to pay that without being ordered to by the court.

Nate had been in the office so long that Daniel and Mariam, the receptionist, had both gone home for the night when he finally gave in to his curiosity and checked Caplan’s desk calendar.

The calendar proclaimed that he’d had “lunch with Tom” today and Nate knew without being told that that meant Tom Johnson, the lead attorney for CPM Management, their opponents in the Balko case.

Still standing at Caplan’s desk, Nate pulled his phone out of his pocket and called his boss. As it rang, he stared at the empty expanse of dark, glossy wood, unmarred by a paper clip or single piece of paper. As expected, it went straight to voicemail. Nate didn’t bother leaving a message; he knew Caplan wouldn’t listen to it.

Calmly he let pulled the phone from his ear, redialed. Holding the phone in between his ear and his shoulder, Nate left the edited Morales defense on Caplan’s desk then closed and locked the door. Voicemail.

Calling a third time, he crossed the hallway into his own office and began straightening his desk. He wasn’t angry; he wasn’t anything. He’d simply crossed a line he hadn’t known was there, and now he was done. He sat in his desk chair and hit dial a fourth time.

This time, before he got Caplan’s pre-recorded voicemail message, Nate got a text from same.

_Wht the fuck? Am at dinner, can i not eat w/out you needing me to hold your dick while u piss?_

With practiced ease, Nate ignored the vitriol and responded _Call Me_

Nate sat quietly making notes on the state of various tasks on this To Do list, organizing his notes for tomorrow’s meetings for five minutes. That seemed like a fair amount of time for Caplan to get to a quiet place. When Caplan hadn’t called after that, Nate called again.

This time Caplan picked up.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, you little pissant? Do you know what time it is?”

If Nate weren’t so focused on learning what had happened, he’d be amused. Caplan had never let business hours keep him from calling Nate.

“Did you settle the Balko case?”

“What the fuck business is it of yours?”

Nate stared at the stacks of files that surrounded his desk and wondered how he’d ever gotten used to this. He kept his voice even as he said, “I’m merely trying to ascertain the status of one of our cases. Why didn’t you want me to prep the Balko matter for court next week?”

Caplan started a profane rant insulting Nate’s intelligence and capability, and Nate let it wash over him as the meaningless blather that it was. Caplan was a small man with small ambitions, and in a few years, Nate would have so far surpassed him that he was going to be nothing but a faintly irritating memory. Nate had lost that certainty somewhere along the way, but it was amazing what not-caring could bring back.

“Steve.” Nate couldn’t remember the last time he’d called his boss by his first name. Certainly never in that tone. It stopped Caplan in his tracks.

Nate asked “Is the Balko case still going to trial next week?”

“As a matter of fact it isn’t.” Caplan’s voice had gone sulky, and a distant part of Nate’s brain wondered if he could make Caplan cry. Law school might be punishing, but it wasn’t bootcamp. He considered it, but it seemed like more energy than Caplan was worth.

“You worked out a settlement at lunch.” Nate said, “What was the offer? Have you already talked them into accepting it?”

“Talked them into..?!” Caplan’s voice had gone high with outrage, “I presented them with a good settlement and they leapt at the opportunity. It was a good offer!”

“What was the offer?”

Caplan paused on the other end of the call, and Nate waited for confirmation of something he really should have known all along. His boss wasn’t just a nightmare to work for, he genuinely didn’t care about their clients. He cared more about keeping good relationships with the rental companies than he did about getting their clients their full due under the law.

“Now, Nate, what you need to understand is...”

“No.”

“Now listen here, I’ve indulged this tantrum of yours as much as I’m-”

“Answer the question.” Nate let authority crack into his voice for the first time in a long time. It felt good.

“They get to move into a new apartment, without putting down first month’s rent or a security deposit and they get reimbursed for all of their moving expenses and  legal fees paid. They were thrilled, kept thanking me. Very grateful.”

“They could have gotten enough to send their kid to college, and you settled for getting their moving expenses reimbursed.” Nate said it flatly, letting the bullshit of the deal speak for itself.

“Well, now, a trial isn’t a sure thing, and we can’t know that…”

Nate took a deep breath through his nose and then interrupted Caplan.  “I quit. Today is my last day. I’ll leave my keys.”

“What? Nate, you can’t…”

Nate hung up and turned his phone off. The landline on his desk rang, and he ignored it. It didn’t take him very long to clear his office of the few personal items that marked it as his. Then he wrote thank you notes to Daniel and Mariam and placed them on their desks. His keys went on Mariam’s keyboard and then he locked the door and left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Lady Russell could not help laughing. "Upon my word," said she, "I should not have supposed that my opinion of anyone could have admitted such difference of conjecture, steady and matter of fact as I may call myself."_  
>  -Jane Austen, Persuasion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Upon reading this chapter, bettsfic commented "This is why you don't go to straight men for anything!" I have to agree.

Celebrating his moral victory as only the truly sleep-deprived could, Nate went home and slept for 16 hours. The next day, as he waited for his coffee to brew, Nate booted up his laptop and pulled open his resume. With his phone still turned off, it only took two hours for him to finish a resume, draft a cover letter, and make a spreadsheet of potential grad school options and next steps.

Nate spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning his apartment. His gym bag sang a siren song from his closet, but the heat of his braced knee warned him to take it easy. For once in his life, he had time.

On his second day of unemployment, Nate woke feeling well-rested for the first time in recent memory. He took a long shower and wandered into his kitchen. The cabinets were still chipped, but seeing them in the sunshine after a full night’s sleep, the red looked more cheerful and less like rejected paint from the set of a vampire B-movie. Nate found a pan in the back of his cabinets and took the time to make himself eggs.

The pots and pans were one of the only things of his that had made it into the apartment while Brad had lived there. Brad didn’t have anything, and rather than buying something new,  Nate had volunteered the mismatched collection of things he’d scrounged from his parents’ and grandparents’ basements before he set up his first college apartment. This frying pan, with its dingy, stained, floral pattern had been Brad’s favorite.

Not that Brad gave a fuck about its aesthetic properties. As he’d explained it to Nate, he appreciated a thing well-suited to its purpose, and this pan was the exact right size for omelettes. Nate had been sitting at the kitchen table, watching Brad make them eggs. Brad had been loose limbed and chatty in a way Nate had never seen before. Mistaking Nate’s affectionate silence as disbelief, Brad’d brought the pan over to Nate to make him admire how well the non-stick coating had held up. Completely seriously, Brad told Nate that he appreciated his grandma’s taste in kitchenware. 

Nate couldn’t help but smile at the memory, even if it came with a pang that Brad was never going to get to meet his grandma and tell her so to her face. He finished scrambling his eggs, dropped the pan in the sink, and sat down to eat his breakfast and plan the task of building a new life.

He had enough savings to live off of for awhile, so he divided the To Do list into long-term and short-term tasks. Short-term, he listed all of the errands he’d been putting off, all of the old friends to whom he owed emails and phone calls, all of the things he’d need to do to file for unemployment.

Bearding the lion in its den, Nate turned his phone back on. It buzzed for a full minute as texts and voicemails flooded in. Caplan had sent him a slew of texts which, predictably, swung from threatening to pleading and back again with no acknowledgement of what had driven Nate to leave in the first place. Daniel had been sending him increasingly panicked texts, and Nate felt a pang of guilt. No matter how fed up he’d been, Daniel deserved better.

Nate added Daniel’s name to his list and quickly declined Lilley’s texted invitation to “hang.” He’d missed a call from his mom, so he added her name under Daniel’s, but it was the missed call and the texts from Mike that caught his attention.

Apparently, Mike had tried to tag him in on taking Lacey to her piano lessons yesterday, and things had not gone well in Nate’s absence. The reckless energy that had sustained him throughout the last two days drained away, leaving him feeling like shit. Mike had needed him, and Nate had been too busy being selfish to be there for him. Chagrined, Nate texted his apologies and made plans to meet Mike at the bar later.

For the rest of the afternoon, Nate tried to make progress on his To Do list, but it was hard to concentrate. Turning on his phone had brought the world with all its demands and consequences crashing back in, and he couldn’t stop thinking about how unprofessional it was to leave without two weeks notice, how difficult it would be to find a new job when Caplan would be sure to poison any well he could get his hands on.

Nate had resolved to move away, to start fresh, but now that the opportunity was in front of him, it was overwhelming. Where did he even start?

Eventually, Nate got himself sorted enough to get to the gym, and swimming felt just as good as he’d hoped it would. Not only did the stretch and burn of too long inactive muscles drive the stress out of his body, but he finally felt like he was doing something he was good at again. He ended up doing twice as many laps as he’d intended for the sheer joy of accomplishing something he was proud of. 

His indulgent workout didn’t leave him much time to shower and get ready so by the time Nate got to the bar, Mike was already halfway through his first beer. He looked worn out. The laugh lines around Mike’s eyes and mouth were more prominent than usual, and he looked downright pissy as he sat at the bar watching the muted tv.

Still, his face brightened when he saw Nate, and he gestured Nate into the chair next to him.

“Was hopin’ I’d see you without those crutches! That must feel good.”

“You have no idea,” Nate said, sliding into the chair and ordering a beer, “I’ve never been so glad to walk around in my life.”

Nate filled Mike in on the good news coming out of his appointment and mentioned how good it had felt to get to the gym.

“You had an appointment yesterday and you’re here during daylight hours now. How in the sam hill did you get off early two days in a row?”

No point beating about the bush. “I quit yesterday.”

“Jeeeeezus, seriously? You okay? What happened?”

Nate walked Mike through his growing unease with the way Caplan handled their cases, the sense that the more he learned the less he agreed with what his boss was doing, yesterday’s final straw.

As he listened, Mike started frowning again. 

“Are you sure that was the right call? We all agree your boss is an asshole, but can’t you look for jobs while you’re still there?”

“I tried that!” Nate said, “and every time I got anywhere, there was another emergency at work and I had to drop everything to help out.”

“Still, he’d probably take you back if you asked, right? You kept that place together.”

“I’m not going back, Mike.”

As he said it, Nate knew it was true.  Quitting might have been an utter mistake, but he respected himself too much to grovel for a job he didn’t want in front of someone he disdained as much as Caplan.

Mike shook his head dubiously and ordered another round for both of them. Nate fiddled with the label on the bottle in front of him, waiting for Mike to come out with what he was clearly mulling over.

Eventually Mike said, “You’re fixed alright for money?”

Nate tried not to let the question sting. Mike was just looking out for him; he had no reason to assume that what Mike really meant was  _ You’re not going to end up on my couch again are you? _

And even if he did, it was a legitimate question. Nate had ended up on Mike’s couch the last time he’d been in transition, and that was before the rough patch Mike and Ellen were going through now.  Mike was a good husband and a great father, but Ellen had gone back to work this fall, and he wasn’t doing the best job adjusting to his share of domestic life. It seemed like they were only just now getting back on track. A Marine on their couch wasn’t going to improve things any.

“I’m alright.”

“I’m not trying to be a pain about this, I just don’t want you to walk away from something without thinking it through.”

Nate barked a laugh, “Where was that caution a year and a half ago?”

“A...what?” Mike paused, “The thing with Colbert? I didn’t tell you to walk away, I just told you to be careful.”

“You told me I was going to ruin his life.”

Mike furrowed his brow, “Not exactly how I remember it, but so what if I did? You two were a trainwreck waiting to happen.”

“I was happy.”

“Like hell you were.”

Nate looked steadily at Mike, who was staring stubbornly back. 

“With him I was. Not with anything else, maybe, but I was with what we had.”

Mike sighed. “Maybe. Didn’t seem like it. I’ll take your word for it though.”

Nate watched the closed captions scroll across the bar tv. There was late snow in Minnesota, apparently. Mike had been right that Nate acting like a self-destructive idiot, but he’d been wrong about the cause. And everything that had gone wrong had been Nate’s fault anyway for listening to him instead of standing his ground

“I doesn’t matter. It’s too late now. You’ve seen how he is with me.”

“I was just trying to look out for you.”

“I know you were.” 

Briskly, Nate changed the subject to safer ground. “So, how pissed was Ellen that you forgot to arrange pickup for piano yesterday?”

Mike threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “You’d think I tried to sell one of her kidneys on the black market! It’s a “breach of trust” to forget things now.”

Nate nodded sympathetically. 

They sat uneasily at the bar awhile longer, neither of them interested in another beer but neither of them particularly interested in heading home to what they were avoiding.

They’d watched two segments on sports and one feel good story about a puppy being rescued from a storm drain when Mike turned to Nate and said,“Wait, how he is with you? You still want...I mean...you’d get back together? Even now?”

Nate shrugged. “Not really my call. But yeah, if I had a choice, I’d want to be with Brad.”

“I didn’t realize it was like that.”

Like that. A perfectly Mike way to say  _ I thought it was a sex thing. I didn’t know you loved him.  _ Nate raised a shoulder. 

“I’m sorry for sticking my nose in and fucking it up.”

Nate gave him his best approximation of a don’t worry about it smile. “Don’t be. If you could fuck it up, then clearly we had work to do.”

Mike shook his head ruefully, “And a lot of fucking work it is, kid. Fifteen years in, and I’m finding new ways to fuck it up every goddamned day.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"When I yielded, I thought it was to duty."_  
>  -Jane Austen, Persuasion

  
Brad couldn’t say that he’d given Stiney’s wedding much thought, but if he had, this would not have been what he imagined. The hotel where they were staying was a converted mansion, and the reception was in a literal ballroom. The carpet in the lobby was noticeably plush underfoot, and everything was red and gold and covered in unnecessary embellishments. The bed in Brad’s room was made of dark wood and had creepy babies and fruit carved into it. He could never wrap his head around what so-called “regular” people found acceptable.

When he’d arrived, Brad had received a fucking gift bag with stain wipes and Pepto and other pussy shit for people who couldn’t handle their liquor. It had fucking gold curlicue ribbons tied on it. He considered being insulted but decided that Stiney’s bride’s family had probably handled the whole thing and had no idea what Marines needed or wanted. If anyone with even a distant understanding of Stiney’s job had been involved, they would have tossed a dozen instant coffee packets and some jerky into a plastic bag and called it good.

Leon, Brunnmeier, and Garza were groomsmen, but the rest of them didn’t have anything to do other than show up where they were told when they were told, so the wedding wasn’t going to suck too badly. Plus Ray was staying with Nate, so Brad’d been able to make the three-hour drive up to the hotel in relative peace. Slower-than-his-grandmother, cell-phone loving, dicksuck drivers excepted.

Brad wasn’t bothered by the lack of updates from Ray about how Nate was doing. He’d asked Ray to check in on Nate, and Ray was taking care of it; Brad didn’t need hourly updates or anything; It was none of his business.

It was just that Nate was supposed to have his follow up doctor’s appointment last week, and Brad hadn’t seen him since. Mike hadn’t been at the bar on Wednesday, and no one else had heard how the appointment had gone.

When Ray first got into town, he’d sent Brad a string of barely strung together texts.

_N ditched the crutches_   
_u weren’t kidding abut the apartment this place sucks_   
_i’ve seen happier prisons_   
_i can see why you rented it u probably felt right at home you psycho_   
_i’m gonna buy nate a poster to make it less terrifying here_   
_do u think he would prefer sexxxy nurses or sexxxxxy firefighters?_

That was yesterday midday, and Brad hadn’t heard anything since. He hadn’t texted Ray back. He’d already embarrassed himself enough after the bachelor party, and he wasn’t giving Ray any more info about his feelings about Nate. Whatever the fuck they were. It was hard enough to get a handle on them without Ray providing commentary.

In deference to the Friday night traffic, the ceremony wasn’t until late evening, so Brad had some time between his arrival and the time the shuttles left for the service, despite the fact that he’d worked a half day that morning. After he’d showered and changed into his suit, Brad headed down to the hotel bar. Hopefully, it would be free of creepy winged babies.

The bar was, to his taste, overly embellished and try-hard, but as far as he could tell, contained no carvings. Just faux-gilt shelves with mirrored backs stretching floor to ceiling behind the bar, holding all sorts of liquor. Brad took one look at the 16-page drink menu and ordered the cheapest beer they had. The asshole behind the bar (who kept tweaking and preening at his faux-bedhead hairdo when he caught sight of himself in the mirror) sniffed disdainfully, which was the best part of Brad’s day so far.

Brad was halfway through his inoffensive macrobrew and had successfully glared away three chatty strangers when Ray, Lilley, and Stafford arrived with two girls Brad presumed to be Lilley and Stafford’s dates. Ray’s hair was shaggy and his suit was an awful sharkskin color, but his smile seemed to be genuine, and not the manic one Brad had been used to seeing before Ray had left California. Even if it did encourage his bad taste, Missouri was clearly good for Ray.

Over the next hour, they were slowly joined by other Marines and their families. Soon, they’d commandeered half of the bar and a large section of the lobby. Unsurprisingly, Nate joined them just before it was time to get on the shuttle to the synagogue. Probably he’d been trying to squeeze in some last work before he left. He was clearly the only one of them who wore jackets regularly, as he looked perfectly at ease in his well-fitted navy suit. Compared to the overly large, slightly rumpled suits that all of their friends were sporting, Nate looked like a fucking J.Crew model. His slightly stiff gait was the only remaining visible marker of his knee injury, though Brad guessed that he was wearing a knee brace under the suit pants. Not that Brad was thinking about what was under Nate’s pants.

As soon as Nate sat down in the lobby, he had Penny Espera in his lap and Lacey Wynn sitting next to him. Those two were the ringleaders of the gang of anklebiters that belonged to their friends, and Nate was their favorite. They showed him the schedule of events from the welcome bag, and Nate did an admirable job of pretending that all of it was new to him.

Lacey stumbled over the pronunciation of yichud, and Nate corrected her, smiling wide when she repeated it after him with the stress on the correct syllable. Poke looked up surprised, and Nate shrugged and said, “Baltimore.”

As if that explained it. Brad was surprised Poke didn’t already know - there was no explanation for Nate or for why he knew half of the things he knew. The sooner Poke accepted it, the happier he’d be.

To be honest, Brad was surprised at how Jewish Stiney’s wedding was, but weddings had a way of bringing out the religion in people who’d previously never shown any indication of belief. At least this one was a break from the endless Catholic masses he’d had to sit through, and, hey, Stiney and his bride taking time away from their guests in the yichud room meant more time for the rest of them to enjoy the open bar.

✦

The ceremony and structured part of the reception went by without incident. The ballroom was just as ostentatious as the rest of the hotel. There were dark purple velvet drapes around all of the French doors, columns wrapped in some gauzy shit, and a truly alarming number of forks. The tables had clearly been divided between adults and kids. At the adult table were Brad, Nate, Mike, Ellen, and their kids, Poke, Alicia, and their kids, and the kids' table tried valiantly to contain Leon, Brunmeier, Person, Garza, Christeson, Stafford and Lilley and their dates, and the Reporter. From what he could tell, the actual children were considerably better behaved than the table of younger Marines. Whoever made the seating chart was a lot more clued in to Marine behavior than whoever had made those godawful gift bags.

Stiney’s older brother was a middle-school teacher, so the best man speech was perfectly appropriate, well-delivered, and boring as shit. The maid of honor leaked through hers, which was mercifully short, and then they were set free. Brad, who’d spent dinner pretending to be interested in talk of decks, additions, and which third-grade teacher was the best, immediately got up and headed for the bar.

As Brad came back to the group with his beer, he passed Nate and the Reporter who were wrapped in a conversation in which the Reporter was earnestly explaining “Honestly, as long you’re convinced it’s what you should be doing, you’ll find a way to make it work as a career.” Which was, in Brad’s opinion, patently untrue, but Nate was nodding seriously, so whatever.

Brad came up next to Poke, who was watching Ray dance with his wife, Stafford dance with one of his daughters, and Lilley dance with the other. It was disgustingly wholesome. Before Brad could say so, Poke nudged him with an elbow and nodded his head to the side of the dance floor where the dates Lilley and Stafford had brought were melting into starry-eyed puddles. Ah. Whatever else Brad had to say about him, Ray was a good wingman.

Ellen came up and joined them, and was followed shortly thereafter by Nate and the Reporter. Brad was busy being amused watching Alicia try, and fail, not to be charmed by Ray’s redneck dancing, so he wasn’t really listening, but when Nate said he’d never really learned to dance and Ellen suggested he take lessons now, Brad scoffed “Yeah, in all your free time.”

To his surprise, Nate scowled and snapped “Oh, fuck you,” and swept off towards the bar. The words weren’t unusual but the rancor was. Nate had seemed genuinely pissed. Brad shot Poke a questioning glance, but Poke shook his head. He didn’t know what Nate’s deal was either.

Brad didn’t worry about it much, since he’d been expecting Nate to snark at him long before this, until he realized that close to forty-five minutes had passed, and Nate hadn’t come back. That couldn’t be good. He stepped out of the group and went looking for Nate’s dramatic ass.

✦

Nate was sitting on a bench outside the ballroom when Brad stepped outside. The double doors were closed, but Brad could still hear the pounding music. It was cold for California, so everyone else who’d come outside was gathered around the large fire pits in the yard. Brad and Nate were sandwiched between the two groups, and the sound of semi-distant people somehow made the two of them seem more alone.

“Are you okay?”

Seeing Nate’s face turn to him in the darkness, Brad was unmoored in time. This could have been a thousand different conversations across the desert, except then Brad would never have asked and, simultaneously, he would have felt wholly confident in his right to know the answer.

“What the fuck do you think?”

The bite of it rocked Brad onto his heels, but he wasn’t afraid of Nate, especially when he was being a little bitch.

“I’ll take your ungracious answer as a no. You want to tell me what crawled up your ass and died?”

“That might be the least graceful apology I’ve ever received.”

“What the fuck do I have to apologize to you for?”

“Some might say that calling out someone’s unemployment in such a crude way warrants an apology.”

Brad’s stomach lurched. Unemployment? Since when? He frowned. How had he not heard about this?

Nate raised his eyebrows. “Did you not know?”

Brad shook his head. “I was trying to point out that, in fact, you have little to no free time. What happened?”

“I quit my job last week. I’ve got no backup plan.”

“Nate.” Brad swallowed hard. He’d wanted Nate to leave that hellhole, but somehow Nate looked even more bereft than before. That shouldn’t have even have been possible. “I didn’t know. Honestly. What the fuck happened?”

Nate snorted, “ _You’re_ going to comfort me? Really?”

Brad shot him a look. “Would you prefer I left you alone with your thoughts? Because you’re sitting out here like the fucking before photo in a commercial for anti-depressants. You know - little cloud following you around, pissing on your head.”

Nate let out a little huff, “Yeah, you’re a real humanitarian.”

“Even I’m not going to leave someone when he’s low enough to be asking the fucking Reporter for career advice. That asshole makes a living doing nothing but trotting out stories about us at cocktail parties so limp-dicked civilians who consider driving on the ‘wrong side of town’ a near-death experience can pretend they know what it’s like to go to war.”

Nate rolled his eyes. They’d had this argument before. Nate insisted that there was value in what the War Scribe did; Brad maintained that, be that as it may, he didn’t have to like it or respect it, even if he did like the man himself well enough.

Instead of replying, Nate moved over on the bench so Brad could sit down. He then reached to the far side of the bench, lifted a fresh bottle of beer and offered it to Brad.

“What the fuck? Where did you-”

“Told a waiter my tale of woe. He felt compelled to offer me a bounty of beer.” Even without looking at him straight on, Brad could see the self-satisfied wrinkle of Nate’s nose at the alliteration. He was a fucking nerd when he was drunk.

Brad took the beer and opened it, while Nate drained his and got himself another, tossing the empty into the dark grass in front of them. Definitely drunk, if he was littering.

“So. Tale of woe?”

Nate slumped a little on the bench, bringing his legs closer to Brad’s. Brad tried not to notice. “Nothing particularly interesting. I’ve ruined my own life. Again.”

Brad leaned forward so he could look at Nate’s face. “What happened?”

Nate’s mouth twisted into a self-hating smirk which made Brad want to put his fist through a wall. Or through the face of whoever had made Nate feel this way.

“My boss was such a dick; and I knew that, but I thought...I don’t know. I thought he wasn’t a dick when it mattered. He fought hard in court when we went to court. We settled a lot of cases, but that makes sense when you’re fighting multi-million dollar development companies with a shoestring budget.”

Nate stood abruptly, walking to the edge of the walkway and staring out toward the people around the fire pits. Brad could see him rock back and forth on his heels a little, clearly restless.

“But I was wrong. He settled a perfectly winnable case for a fucking pittance. So I quit.”

“Good for you for getting out.”

Nate let out a bitter little laugh. “Not quite. Now I have no job and no idea what I am going to do with my life. Quitting without references isn’t a great resume builder.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah - easier said than done.”

“You’ll find something That place didn’t deserve you anyway.”

There was a long pause. Nate stood in his shirtsleeves with his back to Brad; his jacket was tossed over the back of the bench. His white shirt glowed against the darkness. The night air was cool and full of moisture, and someone out by the firepits let out a trill of laughter.

When Nate spoke again, his voice was careful and measured. “I get that you think that my job is useless, you’ve certainly made that clear, but I was under the impression that you thought it was a perfect match for me.”

Brad shifted uneasily on the bench. He didn’t think the job was useless, he just knew that Nate could do more, could make more of an impact, help more people if he were someplace where he was respected. He tried to say that without actually saying anything that pathetic.

“You did the right thing. If your boss is fucking over your clients, you couldn’t have stayed. You’ll find something better.”

Nate turned to face him again. There were lines around his mouth that Brad had never noticed before. The bruises on his face had healed, but the dark smudges under his eyes remained. He looked so tired.

“That sounds good, but it’s not that simple. It’s easy for you to think that way you’re the fucking golden child and you have your choice of positions open before you. But what I have is a mediocre resume, a history of quitting jobs, and a boss who is just itching to tear me a new one to the first reference call. No one’s going to be knocking down my door to get me to work for them.”

Nate ran a quick hand through his hair. “Noble gestures don’t work in the real world. There are consequences for taking a stand over some bullshit that won’t change anyway.”

Frustrated, Brad stood to face him. “Okay, so the fuck what? There are consequences for staying and supporting a broken system too. There are always consequences. You fucking handle them.”

“Again I say - your position is a lot easier to take when you have a ticket for Japan waiting for you.”

“Cut the self-pity shit. So you’ll have to work a little bit harder. It’s nothing you can’t handle. And you don’t have to do it alone.”

Nate sneered, and, weirdly, Brad was cheered to see him finally standing up for himself.

“Oh, I don’t have to do it alone? You’ve got my back? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Well, I..”

“Does one of your endless string of one-night stands run a temp agency? Or do you just mean that you’ll have my back right up until you run off to get your dick wet? Honestly, I’m surprised you’re still out here and not in there bird-dogging some bridesmaid.”

That fucking asshole.

"That is none of your fucking business and you have no right to - “

Nate interrupted. “You’re right it is none of my fucking business. Which is why it's a dick move to parade every single partner in front of me and you fucking know it."

"Where else was I supposed to pick people up? You're always there! Every time I see my friends, there you are!"

"One night a week, Brad, and barely that. You couldn't handle going home alone one night a week?"

Yeah, okay, his recent quest to never leave pool night alone wasn't his finest moment. Moments. But that wasn’t the point, and he wasn’t going to let Nate turn this around on him.

Brad waved it away, "Why are you still even in Oceanside? I thought you left me so you could go conquer the world and terrorize Washington or whatever the fuck."

Nate glared at him. “For the last time. I didn’t fucking leave you! I wasn’t breaking up with you. I wasn’t looking for a way out. So you can take your aggrieved patience and blow it out your ass!”

“Right. Because avoiding me and the apartment were signs that things were going great.”

Nate rolled his eyes, and Brad bit his tongue to keep himself from balling his hands into fists. Nate’s self-righteous cockiness was a lot more attractive when they weren’t talking about how he’d blown up Brad’s entire life.

“They were all signs that I was freaking out because I was going to sink your whole goddamn career, and I was starting to think that I wouldn’t care if you ruined mine, which gave me a weird, unfair advantage that I didn’t know how to talk to you about. And yeah, I let you jump to conclusions and I didn’t come find you before you left, and that’s on me. But I apologized for that, and you didn’t even bother to answer my the goddamned email.”

Brad choked on air. He’d done a pretty good job pushing that email from his mind.

He’d been in Germany, waiting for final assignment, when Nate’s email had come through. It had been a week since he’d left Oceanside, about a month since Nate had dumped him. He hadn’t been expecting to hear from Nate, and when he’d opened his email and seen Nate’s email address, his heart had slammed into his ribs. He had been very aware of how exposed he was in this shared computer lab, though there was only one other grunt in the place, and he was four computers over, paying no attention to Brad.

Brad had closed his eyes and taken three deep breaths through his nose, trying to calm his pounding heart. It was probably going to be some pussy apology. There was nothing Nate could say that would change the fact that he’d let Brad think he was serious and then he’d walked with no warning. Fucking coward.  
  
Brad had opened his eyes and read the subject line of Nate’s email: “Continuing our conversation” which pissed Brad off. That hadn’t been a conversation; it had been an ambush.

Fuck this. The bit of Nate’s email which showed in the preview was stilted and overly formal. “Brad, I apologize for not reaching out sooner…” Brad could have laughed. Eight months together and the best apology Nate could muster was more impersonal than the spam he got. At least those pornbots were trying to make him happy.

If Nate had truly wanted to fix things, he would have come to talk to Brad before he left. Whatever this was, it was a feeble gesture to assuage Nate’s conscience, and Brad wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He’d deleted Nate’s email without opening it.

He didn’t need Nate’s mealy-mouthed apologies. He didn’t need Nate, who clearly wasn’t the man Brad had thought he was. He didn’t need anyone. He’d tried the domestic thing and it didn’t suit him.

Brad had emptied his trash folder, logged out and slammed out of the computer lab hard enough that the asshole watching porn in the corner had stared after him.

Before Brad had to own up to any of that, horrible music and the sounds of a crowd burst between him and Nate as the double doors opened, and Ray, Christeson, and Qtip came out.

“LT, my man! Help me out here.”

“Ray, can you give us a second?”

“No can do, hombre. I need the LT’s expertise.”

Not noticing, or deliberately ignoring, the tension, Ray stepped between them and brandished a plate with cake on it at Nate.

“What is it about weddings that makes people think they have to fuck up perfectly good dessert? Is it a Roman thing? Can I blame Queen Victoria? Because whenever I go to a wedding, the cake is the size of Qtip’s mom’s ass...”

“Fuck you, man”

“And covered in these little frosting warts which ruin the whole thing. When you go to a wedding, no one says ‘hey, let’s feed them a monster-sized steak covered in four feet of sauce,’ so why do they feel the need to mess with the cake? I get a plate with normal fucking green beans and then I get handed this sad excuse for a dessert…”

He waved his slice of cake in Nate’s general direction again, “and it makes me wonder. Is there a reason that as soon as love is involved a perfectly normal cake sprouts tumors and layers and fucking flowers bigger than a ballsack?”

“Maybe your shriveled sack,” Stafford said into his beer and Christeson tittered. Ray frowned.

“Fuck off! It’s a figure of speech.”

“It definitely isn’t,” Nate said, “and I am definitely not drunk enough to be talking to you about either balls or frosting.” Avoiding Brad’s eyes, he tipped his bottle to all of them and walked off.

Fucking Ray and his goddammed endless game of twenty questions had cut off the first meaningful conversation he and Nate had managed to have in years. Even as Brad turned to tell Ray exactly what he thought of that, Ray was stepping closer so that he could speak to Brad without the others hearing.

“Hate me or don’t, brother, but I’m not letting you open the fucking Pandora’s box that is ex-sex, especially with that ex. Fuck, Brad! There’s not even hope hiding out at the bottom, there’s just regret and you fucking off to Japan and not coming home for a hundred years. I’ll take your spooky Iceman glares or whatever the fuck. At least you’re here. Fuck.”

Ray sloppily punched Brad in the arm and wandered off, which did not lessen Brad’s confusion. He was still pissed, but Ray thinking he was helping had him off-balance.

For one thing, Ray apparently couldn’t tell the difference between fighting and flirting. Brad should make a note of that for another time, because _what the fuck, Ray?_

For another, it hadn’t actually occurred to him that Ray missed him when he was gone. Whenever he came home, they just picked things up as they had been. It had always worked for Brad, but maybe not for Ray? Ray didn’t even live here, why did he miss Brad?

Also, it appeared to be common knowledge that Brad’s next posting would be in Okinawa, but that was news to him. He hadn’t even put his name into consideration yet. He wasn’t sure if he was going to.

He couldn’t say why it bothered him that everyone assumed that he had one foot out the door, but it did. He belonged here just as much as anyone, and the longer he was home, the longer he thought he might like to stay. He knew, objectively, why his friends thought he’d aim for the Okinawa job, but they could have asked. There was more to him than his ambition.

He didn’t like that Nate thought he was taking the Okinawa job, and that was a thought that he didn’t want to examine any more closely.

Especially if Nate actually hadn’t been trying to break up with him. It had been so long that Brad had almost completely convinced himself that the email had been a bunch of half-cocked dithering, that Nate was to blame for the fact that they’d fallen apart, and there was nothing he could have done differently. This new state of affairs wasn’t something Brad was prepared to absorb while he was half-drunk at a public function. He needed another drink and headed back into the ballroom for beer and distraction.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them._  
>  \- Jane Austen, Persuasion

A few hours, and more than a few drinks, later, Brad found himself back on what he was rapidly starting to consider his bench. The party was ending, and he was dimly aware that he’d be happier in the morning if he made his way back towards his room, but the hotel ballroom had been hot and sticky, and it was refreshingly cold outside. Besides, even through his haze, he was restless, itching for a more satisfying end to an unsatisfying evening.

As if summoned by Brad’s discontentment, Nate walked out of the double doors, helping Lilley carry a half-comatose Gabe. He had to tell Nate the truth. He had to tell Nate that it wasn’t only his fault.

“Nate.” Brad’s voice came out louder than he’d intended, and a frown flickered between Nate’s eyebrows. But Brad was committed now, so he gestured to Nate to join him.

Nate said something to Lilley, who nodded, and then he relinquished his hold on Gabe. As Lilley and his bundle of drunk Marine headed off, Nate sat down next to Brad. Nate was rumpled and flushed, and it was the most human Brad had seen him look in ages. He looked like a person rather than the icon of tragic forbearance he’d been lately. They should get truly, properly, drunk together more often. Maybe they’d have the conversations they needed to have.

“About earlier…”

Nate started to wave him off, but Brad persevered. This was important. “I didn’t read the email.”

Whatever Nate had been expecting Brad to say, that hadn’t been it.  He stared, eyes wide and mouth half open. 

“I assumed,” Brad straightened in his seat; Nate deserved a proper report, “that it was going to be the same bullshit you were spouting in our apartment, topped off with something awful about it being ‘for the best’ and ‘still being friends.’ So I deleted it. And then emptied the Trash folder, so I couldn’t change my mind.”

When Nate spoke, he did so very carefully, with the sort of precision that let Brad know that he was being polite because he had chosen to, rather than because Brad deserved it. 

“So I’m clear on what you’re saying- I spent hours crafting a message that would explain things in such a way that wouldn’t get you in trouble if someone else saw it. An email in which I explained, in exquisitely mortifying detail, exactly how fucked up I was over you. And you deleted it. Unread.”

“That is correct. And then I deployed, so I couldn’t send or receive any additional messages.”

Nate was regarding Brad with the sort of careful calm that usually indicated that he wanted to rip someone’s spine out through their nostrils.

“I’ve been killing myself for months thinking that, even though I took it back and profusely apologized, losing your trust was too big a breach for you to forgive and it turns out, you’ve just been being a petty dick because you can’t be bothered to read your fucking email?”

“If it helps, it only took me a few hours to realize that I’d been an idiot for not at least reading it.”

Nate narrowed his eyes dangerously. “I think you know that it doesn’t. Because that implies that you had time to reach out and tell me you’d been a sanctimonious prick, but you were too proud to do so. Accurate?”

“Affirmative.” 

“Are you under the impression that telling me this now absolves you from what a dick you’ve been since you’ve been home?”

“I maintain that I have been nothing less than a para- paragon of virtue,” Brad’s tongue tripped over the word, but he was undeterred, “but hypothetically, if I had ever slipped, I do not offer this as an excuse.”

Nate gave a reluctant half-smile, “Christ, you’re a pain in the ass.” 

Brad smiled back, then said “It’s okay if you’re pissed about me not responding. You have every right to be.”

Nate shook his head. “No. It’s all water under a very old bridge. I shouldn’t have let you think….”

He trailed off, and Brad wished more than anything that he’d read that email. Because Nate didn’t mean that. Nate thought he meant it, but Brad knew him better than that. Nate’s go-to move was to declare that things were fine and then push through until they were. Nate went around throwing himself on swords that weren’t even threatening anyone, just in case.

Brad should have realized it before. Maybe if he had they wouldn’t be sitting here as almost strangers and Nate wouldn’t have that sadness around his eyes. He wanted so badly to fix it that more honesty sprung forth, unprompted.

“I wasn’t spouting off because I was pissed at you.” 

Nate scoffed, and Brad tried to narrow in on the right words through the alcohol fog. “Maybe when I first got back, but now it isn’t that… I...” He met Nate’s eyes and knew that he could trust Nate to understand. Whatever else had happened, they still had that. “I don’t know how to be casual with you.”

Nate’s face was sad, and his half-smile felt like a punch in the chest. Brad hated seeing that expression on Nate’s face.

“I understand that. It’s hard not to fall into old patterns.”

“Not all of our old patterns were bad,” Brad said softly. Nate chewed on his lip, and it was so familiar that Brad’s heart tripped into his throat.

Sitting this close, Brad could see where Nate’s collar had collapsed from him tugging at it. Brad felt a perverse urge to reach out and straighten it. 

As if he’d sensed Brad’s thoughts, Nate shifted back on the bench, restoring the space that had disappeared between them as they spoke. 

“I should go and make sure Lilley didn’t leave Garza in a hallway some place.”

Brad nodded. All of the things he wanted to say, couldn’t let himself, clogged his throat. Nate was still close enough to touch, and Brad had the sudden mad idea that if he just reached out and pulled Nate close, they could make everything else work, as long as they figured it all out together.

Before he could do something he’d certainly regret, Nate stood. 

“Thank you for telling me that.”

“Nate…”

But whatever Brad had been gathering his courage to say was cut off by a headshake and the absolute misery on Nate’s face when he said, “I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“I can’t talk about this with you.”

For a second, he looked down at Brad as if he were going to say something more, but instead, he hitched a shoulder and turned away. 

Brad stared after him as Nate walked toward the main lobby doors. It was quiet, and the cold was raising goosebumps on his arms, but Brad just sat and stared at where Nate had once been, asking himself what the fuck he was supposed to do now.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _As to the sad catastrophe itself, it was perfectly decided that it had been the consequence of much thoughtlessness and much imprudence._  
>  -Jane Austen, Persuasion

Brad hadn’t had a chance to pull his shit even a little bit together before Nate came back through the lobby doors calling his name. 

When Brad didn’t react quickly enough, Nate called his name again, putting some snap behind it. When he’d halfway closed the distance between them and Nate didn’t have to shout any longer, he said “Ray fell on the stairs, hit his head. I need you to sit with him while I figure out a ride to the hospital.”

Their hotel used to be owned by a family with more money than sense and the lobby was dominated by two marble staircases which swirled dramatically down from the second floor. Ray had been threatening to slide down the banisters all day. 

As Brad fell in behind Nate, he struggled to make “Ray” and “hospital” make sense. It sometimes felt like he’d spent half his life watching Ray make life-and-limb-endangering decisions, but Ray was like a cat. No matter how he fell, he hopped back up, grinning and mouthing off. 

Entering the lobby, Brad clocked that the room was mostly empty. There was a staff person standing at the foot of the stairs, a semi-conscious Garza dumped in a chair, and Lilley sitting next to a small figure on the stairs that Brad’s brain refused to recognize as Ray. 

The hotel guy was wearing blue latex gloves, and he had a soft bag at his feet. Focusing on what he could comprehend, Brad immediately decided that he hated him. Brad had first aid training and he knew the gloves were as much for Ray’s protection as the guy’s, but the gloves and the way he was standing made it so clear that Ray’s blood was a nuisance that this guy was dreading cleaning up that Brad hated him with a hot, specific clarity.

Ray was sprawled across the landing halfway up the staircase, something folded up under his head; Lilley was holding something white to his forehead, and there were red smears on three or four stairs which gave Brad a sickeningly clear picture of what had happened before he got there. 

As they approached, Brad realized that Lilley was keeping up a constant conversation, directed at Ray. Months in a platoon together had given Brad impenetrable shields against the inanity that spilled from Lilley’s mouth, but when he focused, he could hear Lilley saying “Nah, brah, just stay there, brah. You fell, and the LT wants you to stay still. You’re all good, it’s all good. Just stay down, man, there you go, don’t get up, you’re fine, you just fell. The LT says it’s all good.”

Ray must have heard them approaching, because as Brad and Nate started to climb the stairs, Ray tried to lever himself up on his elbow, only to be held back by Lilley’s restraining hand on his shoulder.

“Stay still, Person,” Somehow Nate managed to imbue his voice with all of the force of a shouted command while staying quiet enough not to hurt Ray’s head. 

Ray stilled, and Lilley looked up at them. It was then that Brad noticed the four or five pieces of blood-saturated gauze around his feet, likely the inadequate contents of the hotel guy’s med kit, because Lilley was currently holding a towel to Ray’s face. 

“ ‘m fine,” came Ray’s voice, muffled by the towel, “Let me up, you possessed Ken doll.”

“Shut up, bro” Lilley said, not unkindly, “He keeps forgetting he fell, and when I tell him what happened, he insists he can walk it off.”

He looked back down at Ray, “Nate said to stay still in case you fractured something. You gotta stay down.”

“What happened?” Brad’s voice was too aggressive, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the red starting to show through the towel where Lilley’s fingers pressed. 

Rather than answer, Nate said, “911 said they’re busy and it could take an ambulance almost two hours to get here. Todd,” Nate nodded to the hotel guy, “says that the hospital is only twenty minutes or so away. I need to find someone who’s ok to drive, and Lilley needs to get Gabe to their room before he pukes in the lobby. Again.”

Brad didn’t spare a glance for the beleaguered Gabe, instead, crouching next to Lilley and pressing his fingers where Lilley’s held the towel to Ray’s face. It looked like Ray had split his forehead just above his right eye. Using his other hand, he brushed the corner of the towel back from Ray’s other eye.

Ray grinned and winced at the same time. “S’up, homes?”

Brad held his left hand up to block the bright lights from Ray’s eye. “Ray.”

“I told you I wouldn’t let you give in to the ex sex, I’ve got your back, man.” 

Brad hoped that the movement behind him meant that Lilley and Nate had gone on their respective errands because what Ray thought was a conspiratorial whisper left some things to be desired in terms of volume and discretion.

Leave it to Ray to have a moderate-to-severe brain injury, and still be focused on Brad’s sex life.

Ray’s eyes went comically wide, “Shit, bro, where’s Lilley? Is he still here? I’ll tell him I was just being an asshole.”

Ray craned his neck and tried to sit up. 

Brad pushed against his shoulder. “Stay still, you miscreant, before you knock loose the few brain cells you have left. Lilley’s gone.”

Ray relaxed, “Cool. I got your back, bro.”

Brad fought back a smile. “Don’t call me bro. And stay fucking still.”

Ray laid back easily for all of thirteen seconds before his eyes popped back open, and he said “Okay, but why are we fucking around here? I gotta get back to the party.”

“You fell, dipshit. The LT’s getting you a ride to get your head stitched back together.”

“I fell?”

“Yes, so shut up and lay down.”

“At the wedding?”

“After.”

Ray thought about that for a second, then closed his eyes again and said “My head is fucking killing me. Just shoot me now, Brad. Put me out of my misery.”

“If you’d shut up I’d be in a lot less misery.”

Ray snorted, “Whatever, bitch, you love me.”

If Ray weren’t literally bleeding under his hands, Brad would have had a thing or two to say about which of them exactly was the bitch, but as it was, Brad let slide. 

He couldn’t have said how long he crouched next to Ray, reminding him that he’d fallen and he had to stay still, putting up with Ray’s complaints, and trying to make jokes to keep Ray distracted. The cream colored marble was hard under his knees, but he hardly noticed. It felt unnaturally bright on the stairs, with the sculpted brass railing throwing the light from overhead back at them. The hairs on the back of Brad’s neck wouldn’t lie down - he and Ray were too exposed; he had a man down and they were surrounded by higher ground with perfect sightlines. More than once, the fingers of his free hand twitched for the weapon which wasn’t by his side. 

He wasn’t having a fucking episode. He knew exactly where he was -in the middle of this tacky impersonation of upper class decor at a wedding which Brad was regretting attending more and more with every incident - but training thrummed at the base of his skull, and Ray was bloody and glassy eyed under his hand.

The worthless hotel guy hovered nearby the entire time but had no useful suggestions or input. Brad could see him shifting uneasily from foot to foot in his periphery, and he wanted to snap at him to stand still. Among the three of them, he was definitely the most comfortable. When the towel over Ray’s eyebrow began to soak through, Brad didn’t bother looking to him for a replacement, choosing instead to refold it and place a drier section over Ray’s bleeding face.

With the impeccable timing that made him so essential to all of them, Nate appeared out of nowhere and snapped “Todd. More towels. Now.” Todd scurried off and Ray slurred, “Brooo, don’t blame Todd. I just gotta lotta blood, man.”

Nate crouched and said “Hey, Ray, Stafford is getting his car. Once he pulls it around, Brad and I are going to take you to the hospital and get someone to check you out and stitch you up.”

Ray smiled softly, and for a second Brad thought he was going to say something genuinely sweet, but instead, Ray started to sing, “Where you lead…I will follow…anywheeeeereeee.”  Brad had to admit, he really did like Ray sometimes. Nate laughed in the way Brad loved, where he tossed his head back and his whole body looked like it would follow. 

Distracted by the circus sideshow that was Ray with a head injury, it took Brad a second to fully comprehend what Nate was saying. 

“Qtip’s sober?” 

Nate gave Brad a look of wry amusement. “I was surprised too. Apparently, he’s got a good thing going with the girl he brought, and he wanted to make a good impression.”

Beneath them, Ray snorted. “Sure. Or he’s still hungover from last night, and he just didn’t want to tell you.”

“I honestly don’t give a shit, as long as he’s okay to drive,” Nate said.  Brad concurred.

Ray blinked up at them, and then said, “What happened? Did I fall?”

✦ 

Horny or hungover,  Qtip got them to the hospital in one piece, and Brad sat with Ray while Nate got them checked in. Nate navigated the chaos of an emergency room on a Saturday night with a sure stride that Brad recognized, easily sidestepping a sobbing toddler who made a grab for him and skirting the elderly woman puking into a plastic bucket. Watching him, you’d never know he’d been drunk enough to be throwing shit just an hour or two earlier.

Ray was slouching in the hard plastic chair with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. He was cradling one arm in a way that made Brad wonder if he’d hurt his wrist when he fell, and the other was pressing the towel to his forehead.

Nate returned with a clipboard, sat on Ray’s other side, and began asking some standard questions. When Nate got to the questions about insurance, Ray’s head came snapping forward so suddenly that he almost overbalanced, and Brad and Nate both reached forward to steady him. 

“My insurance card! I don’t have my fucking wallet!” 

Brad stared at him for a second, then looked over at Nate and saw his own incredulity mirrored on Nate’s face. He turned his focus back to Ray. Dreading the answer, he asked, “You mean it’s back at the hotel?”

“No, it’s at his apartment.” Ray hitched a thumb at Nate, who looked deeply pained. “I only brought my license and my debit card.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Sir,” Brad interrupted, “Surely you’ve known this degenerate long enough to know that we don’t ask him that question. The answer is only going to make all three of us unhappy.”

Ray raised a sloppy finger in Brad’s direction, then flopped his head back against the back of the chair. Nate and Brad exchanged worried glances. It was clear Ray needed medical attention sooner rather than later.

“Do you know what kind of insurance you have?” Nate asked.

“Fuck no, why the fuck would I know that?”

“I don’t know,” Brad snapped, “Maybe so that if you crack your fool head open you can get medical attention before you end up permanently eating apple sauce through a fucking straw?”

Without looking at him, Nate reached over Ray and placed a placating hand on Brad’s knee. Brad forced himself to take a deep breath. He closed his eyes and focused on the weight of Nate’s hand, but immediately regretted it, as the swooping, unsteady darkness reminded him how much beer he’d drunk back when the worst thing that had happened that night was Nate yelling at him for his indiscreet hookups. 

As he opened his eyes, Qtip was heading toward them across the crowded waiting room. Nate nodded once and said to Ray, “Right. We need to get you taken care of. We can figure the rest out later.”

He stood, gathered the clipboard and pen, and headed over to the registration desk. Qtip slid into the spot he vacated and patted Ray on the knee. 

“Even though you’re fed up, you gotta keep your head up,” he said in what Brad assumed was supposed to be a comforting manner.

Brad didn’t know what it was about Nate that made perfect strangers want to listen to him, but half an hour later, they were ensconced in a darkened ER cubicle, and an aggressively peppy male nurse was stitching up the cut in Ray’s forehead. 

Qtip leaned over to watch the entire process and narrate it as if he were doing director’s commentary. 

“Gross, it looks like chicken! You’d think that poking a needle in would squeeze out more blood, but I guess you already bled it all out because it’s just going right through.”

It was impossible to comprehend that he was the soberest among them. 

Brad thought about telling him to shut up, but the nurse didn’t seem to mind, and it was keeping Ray distracted, so Brad let it be. His mouth tasted like Chaffin’s socks, and he was sobering up just enough to know that he was heading for a killer headache in a few hours.

“What’s blood for, if not for shedding?”  Qtip said, in the voice that let Brad know that he was quoting something. Brad had a glimmer of hope that the nurse would shut him down now that he was being a fucking serial killer, but Mr. Sunshine just nodded and said “Nice,” before going back to his stitching.

Nate appeared at Brad’s side out of nowhere with coffee and water, and Brad almost wept with gratitude. He took down half the bottle of water in one go, then accepted the cup of coffee Nate handed to him. And if that wasn’t more than enough, when Qtip restarted his gory monologue, Nate said, “Evan” in a voice that brooked no objection, and soon the only noise in the room was the game show playing on the tv in the corner. There was a reason Brad had fallen so hard for him the first time.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If this feels like a little bit of a placeholder chapter, that's because it is! Not Yet Wise is taking a break for August, but I'm looking forward to getting our boys to their happily ever after in September!

In the forty minutes since Ray had gotten his arm wrapped and his head stitched, Nate had talked to an overworked medical resident, the nurse who’d been stitching Ray up, the ER registration person, and an apologetic hospital administrator and had come up with an almost acceptable plan. It was a private hospital which meant that they were only obligated to provide life-saving services for Ray and nothing else. In order to do more in-depth testing, such as an X-ray for neck injuries and a CT scan to check for a brain bleed, they needed to admit him. Which they wouldn’t do without insurance. 

However, since everyone agreed that a long drive to the nearest public hospital wasn’t ideal for someone who may or may not have fractured a vertabra in his cervical spine, they needed to stall. The ER was swamped, but the medical resident had not-very-subtly suggested that, due to a backlog of patients waiting for a CT scan, it might take all night to get him in for the scan and that, technically speaking, brain bleeds could be life threatening. The ER registrar didn’t look thrilled about losing one of her beds for the night, but the administrator had looked relieved. 

As the others had hurried off to do whatever of the dozen things they probably had to do in a swamped hospital on a Friday night, the administrator had scanned her clipboard and then looked back up at Nate and said “So you’ll be back here at 8:00am with Mr. Person’s proof of insurance? That’s when I go off shift and they’ll either have to transfer him or admit him.”

It’s clear from the pause before “proof of insurance” that this woman thought that Nate was going to commit some sort of insurance fraud, and Nate was impressed that the hospital staff seemed pretty on board with that. Then again, they probably knew better than he did how fucked up this whole system was.

Bureaucracy conquered, Nate’s next challenge was going to be getting his guys to leave Ray alone in the ER. Two of them _could_ handle the six hour round trip in the next seven hours, but it was better if they didn’t have to. Nate had experience taking the shitty caffeine pills they sold at gas stations and he’d prefer to never do that again. 

He was pretty much sober by this point, given that it’d been a few hours and he’d had both water and coffee, but it had been clear from the dazed look on Brad’s face when he’d left Ray’s cubicle that Brad wasn’t all the way there yet. It made sense to put him in the back seat to sleep it off, have Qtip take the first half of the drive there, have Nate take the second, and have a rested Brad drive them back. 

When he got back to the cubicle, he paused in the doorway for a second, planning his approach. The only lights were the lights under the cabinets and the glow from the muted tv. Ray was lying flat in the bed, head turned as far as the neck brace would let him toward Stafford, who was leaning against the counter under the cabinets. He had purloined a women’s magazine from the waiting room and was reading the sex tips aloud to Ray, offering color commentary as he went. If they’d needed proof of Ray’s concussion, they’d have gotten it in the fact that Ray was letting Qtip hold the stage,offering up nothing but a weak chuckle now and again.

Anyone who wasn’t paying attention might have thought that Brad, who was sprawled in the chair in the corner, legs taking up half of the space in this tiny room, was dozing. His eyes were closed and his head was tipped back against the wall. However, Nate was in the habit of paying attention to Brad, and he saw the tightening of Brad’s mouth every time Ray let out another pathetic attempt at a laugh. 

Ray cleared his throat. Brad’s eyes opened and he was standing over Ray with a bottle of water before Ray had even finished. Nate took the opportunity to knock on the doorframe and get the attention of the group. 

“Ray, would you mind if I borrowed your attendants for a moment?”

Nate had to give Ray credit, even flat on his ass he had a good sarcastic smirk. “Guess I could spare them for a minute. But don’t take too long, it’s almost time for my sponge bath.”

Brad rolled his eyes, but smiled, looking softly pleased that Ray had enough energy left to be an asshole.

When he had Brad and Qtip gathered in the hallway, Nate laid out the plan. Even before he’d finished, Stafford was scowling. “Hell, naw, bro! We ain’t leavin’ my main man here alone!”

Nate could tell from the thunderclouds on Brad’s brow that he too objected to the idea of leaving Ray alone with these strangers. 

“I don’t like it either, but without his insurance card, he’s getting bounced at 8. There’s got to be someone at the hotel we can call to come sit with him.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.” Ray called out from his bed. When they turned towards him, he was glaring from his prone position. “Turns out that I can still hear just fine, fuckheads. Get in here.”

There was barely room for the three of them plus the bed in the tiny room, but they managed. Nate ignored the body heat radiating off of Brad, who was pressed just to his left. Not time to go there. 

“We don’t want to leave you alone,” Nate started to explain, but Ray cut him off.

“Yeah, I fucking heard you, and no fucking thank you. I don’t need some sleep-deprived, drunk-off-his-ass Devil Dog banging in here, bitching about the uncomfortable chair to babysit me.”

Brad frowned. Nate couldn’t blame him. Despite the attitude, Ray looked exhausted. In the dim light, the shadows under his eyes were enormous, and he was clearly in pain and trying not to show it. Nate felt a swirl of guilt wrap itself around his stomach. Not that he was glad that this had happened, but he’d been feeling a rush of satisfaction at a plan well-conceived and a problem well-solved. This was a stark reminder that his sense of accomplishment came at Ray’s expense.

“Christeson’s probably not sleeping anyhow,” Stafford said quietly. A significant look passed between him and Ray. That was something Nate’d have to ask about later.

“Nah,” Ray said, “I’m good. I’ll sleep. Maybe see if there are any hot nurses who want to comfort a wounded veteran with sexual favors.”

Brad snorted, and Qtip said, “Don’t think they’re going to mistake your conked brain for a war wound, dude.”

Ray gave another admirable smirk. “I’ll make due. Get out of here.”

Nate was going to object to the casual way Ray was brushing this off, but the press of Brad’s hand on his arm stopped him. The touch was fleeting, and Nate missed it as soon as it was gone.

Without taking his eyes off of Ray, Brad said, “Ray might be a brain-damaged, whiskey-tango goatfucker, but he knows how this works. If he’s saying that he doesn’t want anyone, it’s because he genuinely doesn’t want company not because he thinks that being self-sacrificing is going to impress us, because he knows that it won’t. Right, Ray?”

Ray rolled his eyes and then winced as the movement pulled at his stitches. He gave a lazy wave and said, “Stop flattering me and go enjoy your road trip.”

Brad shook his head, equal parts admiration and disgust, and turned to leave, brushing past Nate as he did. As Nate and Qtip turned to follow, Ray called “Godspeed, my brothers!”

Qtip turned back to flip Ray off and Nate shoved him out the doorway and into the hallway after Brad.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge – that he had been constant; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done.” - _Persuasion_ Jane Austen

There was nothing about this night that wasn’t completely fucked. Brad could clearly track all of the events of the evening, but he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around how he’d ended up slouched in Qtip’s back seat, ostensibly “sleeping it off”, while Nate and Qtip talked quietly in the front seat. 

When they’d reached the parking lot, Nate had assigned Brad the back seat, told Qtip to take the first leg of the drive and promised to take the second. Brad would be in charge of the return trip.

Brad climbed in the back without thinking about it. No point questioning the plan, especially on a night where nothing made sense and Nate had sent an email begging forgiveness and where Ray was small and breakable. All he had to do was stay out of the way while Nate took care of everything. Keep his head down and try not to think about Nate’s hand on his knee or the look on Nate’s face when he’d heard Brad hadn’t read his email. On Ray laying startlingly still in a hospital bed or Todd’s fucking latex gloves.

Brad shifted in the backseat, trying to get comfortable. Qtip’s Impala was at least ten years old. Every time Brad moved, notes of ancient fast food wafted out of what little cushioning was left on the seats. It could have been worse, since when he and Nate had walked Ray out to the car, Qtip had been shoving armfuls of food wrappers and assorted trash into the lobby garbage can, but it wasn’t Brad’s ideal way of covering the distance home.

Ray was fine. His dumb ass had survived worse than a few stairs, and Brad had seen him get stitched up. The doctors had confirmed that at most he had a concussion. Brad shouldn’t feel guilty; Ray had told them to leave. But he couldn’t shake the sense that everything was wrong.

This hadn’t been the first time Brad had held someone’s body together while they waited for help to arrive, but it was Ray and they’d been in an off-brand approximation of a mansion and no one had been armed. That Brad knew of. 

Brad adjusted his suit jacket under his head and tracked the passing streetlights out the window. Nate had made Stafford turn down the pounding music, but not turn it off, so the baseline thrummed through the door frame under Brad’s head. 

Compounding his discomfort was everything that was unsaid hanging in the air in between him and Nate. Not that he knew exactly what that was. But something had been happening before Nate shut him down. Brad needed to figure out what it was and what he wanted to do about it.

Because apparently he’d given up too easily the last time. Apparently, Nate hadn’t been freaked out by Brad’s posting. Apparently, Nate had been…what had he said? Fucked up over Brad. Maybe being together had been as important to Nate as it had been to him. 

Maybe this whole Twilight Zone night was fucking with his head. 

Brad closed his eyes and worked on blanking his mind. The mission brief now was to sleep. He tried hard to listen to the music thumping in the speakers and not to the rise and fall of Nate’s voice responding to Qtip’s questions. But then, he’d never had to work to hear Nate’s voice in a cacophony of artillery and shouting Marines, so he didn’t have to work to hear him now even with the rush of the wind from the slightly open windows.

They were talking about Qtip’s girl and he sounded surprisingly adult when he talked about why he liked her. She was smart. She didn’t take any of his shit. She thought he was funny.  Nate was cautiously enthusiastic, and Brad was surprised to hear him agree with Stafford about how important it was to be with someone who called you on your shit. He was even more surprised when Nate didn’t play the pronoun game and clearly didn’t mind that Qtip knew he was talking about a potential male partner. A lot had changed since Brad had been gone.  _ Nate _ had changed since Brad had been gone.

“Yo, what about that dude from your work? The one who dropped files off for you one time.”

That was clearly not the non sequitur that it sounded like, because Nate let out sound that was either embarrassed or exasperated, but not surprised. Brad strained against the urge to lean forward to listen. He wasn’t supposed to be awake, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to hear this conversation.

He missed most of Nate’s answer to the sound of the turn signal when Qtip changed lanes. That kid had perfectly infuriating timing. From Nate’s tone, it had sounded like a denial, but what the fuck did Brad know? Recent updates indicated that he didn’t know how to read Nate nearly as well as he thought he did.

The most upsetting revelation of the night wasn’t that the email had been a fucking apology.   No, the worst fucking thing he’d learned was that the email didn’t fucking matter because he was still in love with Nate fucking Fick

The email could have said “ _ You got what you deserved. Choke on your own dick, asshole” _ and Brad would probably still be sitting in the backseat of this car desperately hoping to hear that Nate wasn’t romantically interested anyone in particular.

People weren’t, as a rule, that interesting, but Nate was. Every time Brad thought he had a handle on Nate, he got his legs kicked out from under him. 

Nate was sneaky and he was ruthless, and he’d quit his job with no thought to his career when it became clear he wasn’t doing the maximum amount of good possible. 

And he looked frustratingly good in a suit.

Brad let his head fall back against the headrest. He was totally fucked. He was in love with Nate and he probably always would be. Domestic life wasn’t for Brad, not because he couldn’t handle it, but because he only wanted it if it were with Nate. 

Nate had made it very clear tonight that whatever chance Brad might have had when he’d first come back, he’d blown it with callous behavior and snide remarks.

Brad sighed and shifted again. No matter what position he tried, there wasn’t enough room for him to straighten his legs enough to loosen the strain on his lower back. He tried not to think about how old that thought made him sound.

                                                                                                                     ✦

As unlikely as it seemed, Brad must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew, he was waking under the stark fluorescents of a gas station. Slightly disoriented, Brad stumbled out of the car and shook the car ride from his shoulders. As he pulled himself fully upright, he came face to face with Nate exiting the passenger seat and barely managed to avoid startling backward. He hoped his nervous shock wouldn’t show in his bleary eyes, but nothing else had gone his way tonight, so it was probably a worthless effort.

He walked past Nate into the gas station to piss and buy them water. 

While he was standing in line with water for all of them, Nate joined him with a cup of coffee. They stood in silence while the haggard man in pajama pants in front of them chose an assortment of lottery tickets to go with his nip of bourbon. 

Brad studied Nate - he was pale in the glaring lights, but he had determination back in his jaw and in his eyes. He’d shucked off his suit jacket at some point, and his sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. Brad had a flash of what it could be like, someday, to have Nate come home from some civilian job looking like this.  _ Steady and serious and agreeably rumpled. Tired but satisfied.  _ It made Brad’s bones itch to think about.

Brad had never understood the obsession with home - he liked the amenities of civilian life as much as anyone, but he didn’t feel tied to any one place more than another. As long as there was space for him to ride, he’d have everything he needed. When his parents had moved out of their childhood home, his sisters had cried and reminisced and Brad had felt as if he were witnessing a strange alien ritual. It was just a place, it didn’t matter. 

But if home felt to other people the way Nate felt to Brad, maybe he could understand it. 

Nate noticed Brad’s perusal and raised an inquiring eyebrow. Brad shook his head and stepped forward, taking Nate’s coffee to place with his water bottles. Nate thanked him quietly and Brad inclined his head in acknowledgement. He wasn’t quite ready for words just yet.

As he followed Nate across the parking lot, Brad decided that he wasn’t going to admit defeat this easily. Say what you wanted to about him, he didn’t generally make the same mistake more than once. Nate might be pissed, but Brad loved him and that meant he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

Brad slid into the front seat and tossed a bottle of water to Qtip in the back, and leaned his head back against the seat. Time for a plan.

                                                                                                                       ✦

As he drove, Nate stole a quick glance at Brad, who stared impassively out the windshield, face lit by the greenish light from the dashboard. He looked tired, and Nate had to remind himself that this was the kind of tired which could be cured by a good night’s sleep; it wasn't worth the lurch of his heart at the familiar bags under Brad’s eyes.

Nate brought his eyes back to the road, watching the sweep of the painted lines gradually reveal themselves under his headlights. There were hardly any other cars on the road. The three of them passed through quiet towns with no one aware of their presence.

Nate’s mind was pulled to the road trip he’d taken with friends after high school. They’d driven across America just because they could. Across the Midwest, there had been long stretches of nighttime driving when they’d been seemingly alone with the sky and the stars. Somehow driving through all of these towns with their empty streets and brightly-lit yet closed box stores was lonelier. It gave the impression that the world was inhabited by just him and Brad.

And Evan. Nate checked on him in the rear view mirror. He’d wedged his head between the doorway and the headrest, legs akimbo, with the sweatshirt he’d unearthed from his trunk at the last gas station covering his face. It was impossible to tell if he was asleep.

Nate fought the urge to study Brad again. All of the things they’d said tonight and all of the things they hadn’t said were pressing on Nate’s chest. He wanted to tell Brad that he hadn’t meant they couldn’t ever talk about being friends, which was what Nate was sure he’d been about to say, Nate just couldn’t get there right then.

Not when he was worried about his job prospects and feeling overwhelmed by the first emotionally honest conversation he’d managed to have with Brad, hell, with almost anyone, in ages. Not when he had a strong urge to just bury his face in Brad’s shoulder and make all of the rest of the world go away. Not when Brad had the soft flush on his cheeks that he only got when he was well and truly drunk. It always made Nate want to kiss him senseless.

The thought of how drunk they'd been reminded him of the prickly sheen of dried sweat coating his back. Nate always sweated through his shirt when he drank too much. It was that Puritan blood coming down from his mother’s side.

Nate shifted in his seat and changed lanes to avoid a probably-abandoned car by the side of the road. Driving across an unfamiliar darkness with Qtip asleep behind him and Brad at his side was ironically familiar. Not that Brad had literally been by his side then, but it felt the same.

Nate thought of speaking; of saying something, even something oblique, to Brad to let him know they could talk more later. After they’d gotten Ray settled, and maybe, if he were aiming high,  slept a bit. Brad was too quick to forgive people who’d harmed him, but he wasn’t going to be endlessly patient about being shut down, and Nate didn’t want to miss this opportunity for an olive branch. 

Although, he wasn’t sure how he felt about Brad not even  _ reading  _ the email and then coming back to California and swanning around like he’d been the wronged party. Nate had fucked up first, it was true. But still. It pissed Nate off.

And made him feel unbearably fond, imagining Brad clicking delete with an over-the-top righteousness. It was just his style, and the fact that the image made Nate want to smile was exactly why he had to be careful about being casual friends with him.

Even as he was mentally considering his options, Nate felt bad. Who cared whether or not Brad read an email two years ago? Ray was in a hospital bed, alone. He should be focused on helping Ray. Besides getting his insurance card, they should probably get him a change of clothes. And check with a doctor about flying after a concussion. Ray was planning on staying through Monday night, but if the doctors thought he should stay longer, Nate would have to call and rebook his flight. Idly, Nate wondered if a dry cleaners would be able to get the blood out of Ray’s suit. When Nate had arrived in the lobby, he’d been complaining about it being his only one. Would dry cleaners even take an item with bodily fluids on it? He should call his mom tomorrow and ask.

Brad shifted in his seat, and the movement brought his knee to brush against Nate’s hand as it rested on the shifter. There was nothing deliberate or appealing about the contact, but Nate was still jolted out of this thoughts and into the present.

There had been a moment on the bench when Brad had looked at him with something akin to heat. Nate hadn’t forgotten what Brad had said when he’d seen him again - he could barely recognize him - but for a flash tonight Nate had felt the old energy between them - that surge of want that had shimmered between them long before it was appropriate.

No. Nate steeled himself against thoughts like that. Chemistry didn’t mean potential. Thinking that way led to heartbreak and possibly another dip into the dark place he’d gone the last time Brad had walked out of his life. He needed to focus on getting through the next few days, and then, when he was no longer in danger of making an ass of himself in front of Brad at any moment, he could try to decide what to do about what had happened between them tonight.

Stafford let out a quiet snuffle in the backseat, and Nate felt more than heard Brad’s amused snort. No matter how weird things were between them, Nate couldn’t resist saying quietly, “Just be grateful he hasn’t started snoring.”

“Bringing back memories?”

Nate smiled and hit the brakes as they headed into another town. Not that he expected much traffic at this time of night. 

“At least it smells better,” he said.

“And nobody’s shooting at us.” Brad added, “Yet.”

Nate laughed. “As always, your optimism is inspiring.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Nate saw Brad’s grin, incandescent in the dark car, and his gut twisted. A little too quickly, he added, “But shouldn’t you be joining Stafford in sleep? It’s going to be a long day.”

Brad sent him an unreadable look, but his tone was light when he said, “Don’t worry about me, sir. My shit’s squared away.”

That was an odd thing for Brad to say, but Nate didn’t have time to worry about it.  A sign for Oceanside flashed by. Thirty miles to go, and Nate needed to square his own shit away.

Right now, Nate had bigger problems than being friends with Brad or Ray’s dry cleaning bill. Even bigger than the warmth from Brad’s arm that Nate could feel every time Brad shifted in his seat and the shivers that raced down his treacherous spine every time Brad’s arm brushed his.

Nate’s biggest problem was that he had to drive to his apartment, and when he did, Brad was going to know. Nate might be able to lie to himself and to everyone else that he’d been too busy with work to move, but Brad knew what had happened in that apartment and he would know what Nate didn’t even want to admit to himself. That he stayed in that ratshack for reasons far more complicated than logistics. Because he’d been happy there. Because he was punishing himself for ruining that happiness. Because he still didn’t want to admit to himself that living without Brad was permanent and he hoped some day Brad would come back. 

Nate couldn’t handle seeing the pity and discomfort on Brad’s face, and no matter how Brad tried to hide it, Nate would see it. That’s how it has always been between them. They might misinterpret a signal occasionally, but they didn’t miss them.

Nate had already bounced a dozen suggestions around in his head. He could drop them off at a gas station, at a diner for breakfast, any place at all, make an excuse and run to his apartment, but it all came down to this: Any place close enough not to add an inordinate amount of time to their trip would be close enough for Brad to recognize the neighborhood. 

They weren’t far from Oceanside, and Brad showed no indication of dropping off into convenient unconsciousness, so his cover was fucked the moment he got off the highway..

Shame heated his cheeks. He’d bared enough of his soul to Brad tonight, but it seemed that he was going to be stripped of this last pretense of dignity. 

Nate tried to focus on anything else. On Ray, who needed his help. Ray needed insurance cards and a change of clothes and a place to go when the hospital released him.

Speaking of a change of clothes, should he change when he got to his apartment? It didn’t seem fair to change when Brad and Qtip couldn’t, but he’d be much more comfortable in clean clothes. If he did change, what should he put on? It was such a stupid and unnecessary thing to worry about, but if there was an opportunity to remind Brad of what had been between them, shouldn’t he take it?

Nate ran through his best shirts in his head. Fuck. What did people wear when they wanted to flirt? This was ridiculous.

He shook his head at himself and saw Brad send him a questioning look, but thankfully, he didn’t ask.

They had about fifteen miles to go when Brad reached forward and turned off the radio. In a low voice, he said, “If Ray needs to stay in California longer, he can stay with me. I’m sure you have job hunting things to do.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m not working so I can take care of him.”

Before Brad could argue, Qtip lurched upright, shouting “Penguins!”

Brad and Nate exchanged looks, and Brad turned to the back seat to ask “Penguins?”

“They were trying to steal my gems, man. Hey, did you get tired of the radio? I don’t blame you. Open the glove compartment, I’ve got tons of choice shit in there.”

Brad dubiously opened the latch and a riot of loose CDs and jewel cases tumbled into his lap. Nate left the two of them to negotiate music choices and focused on the road, tightness creeping up his back as each mile brought them closer to his place and the look on Brad’s face.

                                                                                                                ✦

It hadn’t occurred to Brad how shitty it would be to pull into the apartment complex which had once been theirs and was now Nate’s until they were in the parking lot. Nate had been sinking further into himself with every turn, and at this point, he only engaged when directly spoken to. Luckily for both of them, Qtip kept up a running commentary that required very little input.

They followed Nate up the stairs and to his apartment door. As Nate inserted his key into the lock, he ran through a quick little speech that hit Brad’s ear as false and nervous. 

“Kitchen’s to the right, Living room’s ahead, that’s where Ray’s shit is. Bathroom is down the hall. Help yourself to anything.” 

He didn’t look at them as he said that or as he stepped into the apartment, and his discomfort was so palpable that Brad had to rescue him. “Solid Copy. You go change. We’ll risk whatever whiskey-tango vermin reside in Ray’s things and get his shit and some clothes without blood for him.”

He was vaguely aware of Nate stalking straight backed down the hallway to his room and Qtip wandering towards the bathroom, but despite his calm words, he was frozen on the threshold. It still smelled the same. There were memories everywhere he looked, and very few of them were of Nate pressing him against the wall and murmuring filthy promises which he would later keep. Most were of the afternoon sun moving across Nate’s lazy smile as his head laid on Brad’s chest and the glint in his eye as he tried to bullshit Brad into having burritos for dinner  _ again.  _ Of riding all day to try to get his head unfucked only to walk through this front door, see Nate sitting on the couch and feel  _ settled _ for the first time in hours.

More disorienting than the flood of memories was the reality of the apartment now. He couldn’t say that it looked the same, because Nate’s things were on the shelves instead of his, but it looked...temporary. Nate had been living there for years, but it might have been weeks from the look of this place. Ray’s neon green backpack and his explosion of belongings showed the most personality of anything in the living room. This place was more impersonal than any number of temporary lodgings the USMC had provided for Brad in his time, and something hard and hollow settled beneath his ribs at the thought of Nate coming home to this dark, empty apartment day after day.

The frozen lump didn’t go away while Brad rifled through the detritus Ray had left behind. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have been here. That he’d abandoned his post and Nate had paid the consequences. Which was inaccurate and bullshit to boot, but tell that to the cold settled in his gut. 

The cold didn’t thaw even when Brad dodged the playful headlock Qtip tried to catch him in while he was bent over Ray’s things.

“The Iceman cannot be brought down by mere mortals!” Qtip cried and flopped back on Nate’s couch laughing his ass off. Again, Brad marveled that he had ever been the most fit among them.

Nate stepped back into the room and Brad forgot everything he’d been thinking or feeling at the sight of Nate in soft jeans and a faded grey t shirt. He’d made a practice of not looking too closely at Nate since he’d come back, but that had been easier when Nate had been wearing horribly ill-fitting work clothes and avoiding him.

Nate’s outfit was clearly chosen for comfort, which meant the clothes had been purchased years and pounds of muscle ago. He might have been going for casual, but he’d landed on “Don’t think I’m going to let you forget about my shoulders and thighs, Colbert.” 

Bastard.

Brad briefly considered tossing Ray’s stuff to Qtip and insisting that Nate stay here with him for as long as it took to fix things between them and then some, but instead he followed Nate out the front door, ignoring Qtip’s incessant chatter about which fast food restaurants were open and which had the best breakfast sandwiches. Qtip was going to eat where Brad stopped and shut the fuck up about it. If the ride down had been uncomfortable, the ride back, with the rising sun in his eyes and a swamp of lust and longing and nostalgia dragging him down was going to suck.  


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All I claim...is that of loving longest, when existence or hope is gone" - _Persuasion_ Jane Austen

Brad waited four hours before he called. That seemed like a reasonable amount of time for Nate to get Ray settled. Brad leaned against the counter in his kitchen and waited for Nate to pick up. The sunlight dappling the floor reminded him that he needed to nag the landlord about trimming the back hedges. While the phone rang against his ear, he walked over and made a note of it on the list next to his calendar. 

He was beginning to think that Nate would ignore his call, but the ringing stopped. Nate’s voicemail didn’t pick up, but no one said anything either. Brad pulled the phone from his ear to make sure that the call hadn’t dropped, and as he returned it, he heard Ray’s voice say, “Well? What the fuck do you want, motherfucker?”

“Where’s Nate?” 

“How the fuck should I know?”

Brad resisted the urge to snap back at him. Ray had just been released from the hospital after all. He might not have a concussion, but the doctor had promised that he’d have a hell of a headache for a few days. “Because you’re answering his phone.” Brad said patiently.

Ray made a questioning kind of grunt and there was a rustling, presumably as he pulled back and noticed which phone he was holding.

“I don’t know where Fick is. Still sleeping, probably, like I’m supposed to be since I’m recuperating from a life-threatening injury, not that you asked how I’m doing, you goat sucking piece of -”

Brad broke in before Ray could get going. “Your life was never in danger and I can tell from this delightful conversation that you’re no more brain dead than you were before you slammed your face into the staircase. Tell Nate I called.”

Ray hung up without saying goodbye.

Brad spent the rest of the day carefully not thinking about Nate. He did his grocery shopping and laundry, fixed a loose cabinet handle and finally swept out the garage, which he’d been meaning to do since winter had ended. His phone was in his pocket the entire time, and he only pulled it out to check to make sure he had service once, though he thought about it a dozen times. Nate didn’t call before Brad went to bed, and Brad deliberately didn’t have any feelings about that.

When Nate didn’t call on Monday, Brad tried to be understanding. Ray could be a whiny little pissant when he put his mind to it, so Brad decided to stop by the apartment with dinner after work. After all, dealing with Ray in this mood could drive even the most forbearing of men to violence, and it would be easier all around if Nate didn’t break Ray’s nose on top of his other injuries. Also, it gave him plausible deniability for hanging around and finding an opportunity to  figure things out with Nate. 

When Brad got there, Lilley and Ray were blowing shit up on the game system Lilley had brought over and Nate was nowhere in sight. The paused long enough to let him in, and then immediately resumed their epic battle. Brad balanced paper bags of Chinese food and watched them for a second before finally asking if he should serve food or wait for Nate. 

Ray shouted “Food!” without taking his eyes off the screen. When Brad asked when Nate was expected back, Ray was typically useless, mentioning saving tiny kittens, sucking dick for rent money, going for a run, job searching, and an underground fighting ring.

He refused to answer any follow up questions with a glare that made it clear he was suspicious of Brad’s motives and not interested in being part of whatever reconciliation scheme Brad had in mind. It would have been an endearing show of loyalty on Ray’s part if his intel hadn’t been woefully out of date, but Brad wasn’t interested in bringing him up to speed with Lilley hanging around.

The apartment was even more depressing now that he was visiting it in the daylight. Nate had been living there for two years, but when Brad headed into the kitchen to find plates for the mu shu pork, they were in the exact same place they’d been when it was his plates in the cabinets.  

Curious and not even a little bit ashamed of it, he opened the storage closet off the kitchen. As he expected, it held not only the hot water heater and some cleaning supplies, but a couple of cardboard boxes full of Nate's stuff. They were carefully labeled, but it didn't look like they'd been opened in years. 

It was like Nate’s life had been frozen - he got a job he didn’t like, but didn’t look for a new one; he stayed in the apartment, but he hadn't fully moved in. It would be one thing if Brad had a sense he was waiting for something better, but he didn’t. 

It pissed him off all over again that none of their friends seemed to have noticed that something was wrong. Even if he was snapping out of it now, someone should have snapped Nate out of it a long time ago. It pissed him off that he hadn't known either. If he’d come home on any one of the number of leaves he’d wasted getting drunk and playing tourist, he would have seen and he could have stopped it.

Brad shut the closet door and turned to take the containers out of the takeout bags. As he dug serving spoons out of the silverware drawer, he had to admit that it wasn’t just Nate who would have been better off. Sometimes, it felt easier to be all the way in one place than to be tearing himself in two, trying to maintain connections with people who were far away and couldn’t understand what he was when he was deployed. But his life was poorer for it, and Nate had been good at showing him that not everything had to be all or nothing. He could be good at his job and still make time for the people at home.

After they’d come home and he’d gotten to see glimpses of Nate as a person and not just an officer, falling for him seemed like an inevitability. Acting on it had been reckless and stupid, but they were both a little fucked up and a little pissed off about what they’d just been through, and being together was the least destructive of the bad choices available to them. Or that’s what he'd told himself. But it had ended up being worth every risk to his career, because he’d never been as easy and content as when he’d been living with Nate.

The first time Brad had stayed out until the middle of the night riding nowhere in particular, he hadn’t called. He’d returned home with his shoulders around his ears, braced for passive-aggression or a fight. Nate was reading in bed when Brad came in, and he smiled and said, “If you didn’t eat yet, there’s leftover Mexican in the fridge.” Brad was convinced the easy geniality was a trap. 

He took a shower and microwaved the food, waiting to be scolded for being gone too long, ready to be asked a bunch of stupid questions about why he felt the need to disappear, as if restlessness had a rational explanation behind it. But when he returned to the bedroom, Nate put the book aside. “How had the conditions been?” he asked, “Had he seen anything interesting? Where had he eaten lunch?” 

There wasn't an ounce of resentment or insincerity in it. Nate didn’t care where he went or what he did, he was just happy to see him and interested in what he’d done while he was out. Once calling home became a courtesy and not a gesture of obeisance, it had been a lot easier to do.

Not that Nate was a pushover. He had unexpectedly firm opinions about Star Trek and he’d flipped more than one Scrabble board when he was losing. He’d once gotten so angry when Brad called _1984_ a bunch of intellectual masturbation that he’d had to take a walk to cool down, which Brad found genuinely amusing to this day.

He dumped rice and pork on the plates and spattered some sauce on the flaking countertop. He still hated this place, but he’d been happy here. They were subjected to highway noise, a leaking ceiling and endless drafts, but they’d spent a lot of time laughing, teasing, and contentedly loafing. It had been a refuge. His home.

Once, Brad had found himself revealing to Nate how sad he’d been during the first semester of military school. He’d known, down to his bones, that he belonged there, and it made him feel like he didn't -and would never- fit that way in his family. He hadn’t known he was lonely until he found a place where he wasn’t. It hurt to find it in the military and not with people who loved him.

He hadn't thought about that in years, had never told anyone, but in the middle of the night, with Nate's eyes on him, serious and steady, it felt somehow necessary and important. Nate hadn't said anything, just shifted closer, pressed against Brad's side, and kissed his shoulder.

Things had never been uncomplicated between them, but their relationship had always felt easy. Nate saw him, and understood him, and never once wished he were anything else. Brad had never experienced anything like it with anyone else. He knew he’d reacted badly when Nate started talking about logistics and circumstances, but it was insulting, like what was between them was inconsequential and could be undone by something as small as an ocean. 

Before he could follow that thought any further, Ray called from the living room, “The fuck is taking so long? Letting me starve lets the terrorists win, Brad. Osama is jerking himself right now thinking about me wasting away. Is that what you want? Filthy terrorists shooting their wads because of you?”

Brad found the paper towels exactly where he expected to, wiped up the spilled sauce and carried the plates into the living room. He didn't bother with a retort, just flipped Ray off as he settled onto the couch to watch Lilley and Ray steal cars and shoot at each other. 

Eventually it got late enough that Lilley packed up to go and Ray started yawning. Nate still wasn’t back from his cocksucking, kitten-rescuing adventures, but Ray needed sleep and sitting around in the dark waiting for Nate to come home was a touch too desperate even for Brad. 

Ray promised to let Nate know Brad wanted to talk to him. Brad had used his sternest voice, which had about a 40% success rate with Ray, so he was optimistic about the chances of Nate receiving the message.

He spent Tuesday and most of Wednesday on alert. He wasn’t nervous, but he was waiting. Nate still hadn’t returned his call. Given that, Brad didn’t think that their conversation was going to go the way he wanted, but at least he’d know. After months of not knowing what he wanted and days of not knowing what Nate wanted, there’d be an answer. It might suck, but at least it would be clear.

That certainty carried him through all the way to the bar Wednesday night. Brad beat everyone except Lilley, but that wasn’t unusual. Most of them had to stop home to check in with wives, kids, or pets. What was unusual was that Nate never showed. Not even after Poke and Mike had arrived. Nate knew that Brad wanted to talk to him, and Brad had been patient, hadn’t pestered him with calls, so where the fuck was he?

When Brad pulled out his phone to demand an explanation, his last contact with Nate was so old that he didn’t have a text history with him anymore. It wasn’t a surprise, but the blank screen was still unnerving.

_Are you coming to the bar?_

Forty minutes and half a pitcher of beer later, Nate responded: 

**_No_ **

**_Babysitting_ **

Brad’s impatience (and the beer) had him typing before he thought.

_Coward_

He didn’t have to wait this time. Even as he put his phone down on the table, it dinged with Nate’s incoming message.

**_I just got yelled at for not knowing the difference between rainbow sprinkles and princess sprinkles and you’re getting drunk and playing pool. Explain how you’re the brave one_ **

The only explanation for that response was that Nate didn’t know Brad was trying to reach him. It might be because he was an interfering fool, or it might be because Ray’s reliability was shaky at the best of times, but Ray hadn’t given Nate the message.

Before Brad could figure out what to say next, Nate texted again.

**_Hold that thought. Literal spilled milk._ **

_You got Ray to drink milk?_

**_while ray would def have opinions on sprinkles he flew home on monday_ **

**_penny and Isabella drink milk_ **

Nate was at the Esperas’. That made more sense, but also effectively shut down Brad’s chances of having an adult conversation tonight. Goddammit. Brad was so tired of things going tits up when it came to him and Nate. They were going to have this conversation, small children and Ray be damned. Brad abandoned subtlety and said, 

_We have to talk about last weekend. When?_

While he was waiting for Nate to answer, he texted Ray,

_Did you by chance flee the state without bothering to let me know?_

**_Fuck off i texted u_ **

_You sent me a photo of dog shit and asked if you should mail it to the Sixta. Was I supposed to know that meant you were home?_

**_That was goat shit you dumbass city boy_ **

_And that was supposed to tell me you were home?_

**_duh_ **

Christ, he was irritating. 

Brad went looking for the pitcher and refilled his beer. He took a moment to talk shit about how badly Poke was kicking Lilley’s ass, and by the time he’d returned to his seat, Ray had sent his version of an apology.

**_Sorry for bleeding on you. Thx for helping me get my head get put back together and not following thru on ur threat to mruder me n my sleep_ **

_I don’t recall threatening you this weekend_

**_it was implied_ **

_I think you’re imagining things. Remember: the voices in your head aren’t real_

There was a long pause before Ray responded, which was worrying. It either meant that Ray was typing a truly epic response, or he was carefully considering his words, and Brad honestly couldn’t say which was more frightening.

**_Don’t do ahything stupid now that ur best pal isn’t there to stop you,ok_ **

**_I know u think tbis is a good idea but teh last time fick broke ur heart u stopped answering the phone an fucked off to england for a year and who knows what kind of vd u got while u were there? U don’t have a natural immunity to that shit it isn’t safe_ **

_My junk is fine, thanks for your concern_

Before Ray could type whatever obscene ideas he was cooking up, Brad said,

_It’s not what you think. It turns out we wanted the same thing and I didn’t know it. I need to tell him that, even if it is too late now. He deserves to know._

**_I still say he can fuck off straight to hell_ **

_You just slept on his couch for a week you moron_

**_Yeah but that’s my friend nate i am talking about your ex nate_ **

Brad rolled his eyes, but all he typed was _Shut up, Ray_. Ray would know what he meant.

It wasn’t until after Brad had gotten home that Nate responded. To his credit, he didn’t pretend not to know what Brad was talking about. It wasn’t the answer Brad was hoping for, but then, he was the one who’d ceded the tactical advantage by letting Nate pick the ground.

**_Are you going to be at poke’s thing on saturday?_ **

_Yeah_

**_Talk to you there_ **

✦

One text message and Nate was dreading his weekend plans. Brad had seen the apartment and now he wanted to continue the conversation where he’d yelled at Nate about self-pity. No matter how good Brad’s intentions, nothing good could come from a conversation where Brad sat him down and said, “Hey. I couldn’t help but notice that your life is a sad museum dedicated to the few months we spent together. I’m flattered, but it’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

Every time he thought about it, Nate got pissed off at Brad for insisting on being straightforward about every damn thing and pissed off at himself for letting himself get stuck. He wanted to yell at Brad to keep averting his eyes for a few more weeks. He was getting his shit together, he just needed a little more time.

It had been a cheap move to put Brad off until Alicia’s birthday party, no two ways about it, but, fuck it, maybe the presence of other people would keep this sit-down mercifully short. The kids were always looking for an adult to play with them, and Nate was not above using them as a shield.

He’d arrived at Poke’s on the dot of one, and then parked around the corner and lingered in the car for fifteen minutes, because he’d been told on more than one occasion that his exact punctuality was not what normal people meant when they issued invitations. Not that normal people invited him anywhere, but it was safe to assume that Poke and Alicia wouldn’t mind a few more minutes to wrangle their kids, house, or outfits before he showed up. Also, if that meant a few more people showed up and it was harder for Brad to corner him, well, that was just a side benefit.

✦

The first thing Brad saw when he walked into Poke’s backyard was Nate’s face lit up by the afternoon sun. Nate was kneeling next to a kid-sized picnic table listening intently to something Penny Espera was telling him. The sun highlighted the strong angle of his nose, the slight turn-out of his ears, and the long line of his pale neck disappearing into his green polo shirt.  Brad had heard people mock Nate’s choir-boy looks, but looking at the strong lines of his profile limned with light, Nate had the face of the prophet - blessed to always be present and a little removed. Any idiot could see it, if they looked away from his mouth and noticed the stubborn line of his jaw and the sharp ice of the eyes. No sweet hymns for that face. 

Not one to hesitate when a decision had been made, Brad dropped the twelve pack he was carrying where he stood and walked over to the table. Penny greeted his approach with a cheery wave, so Brad addressed his question to her.

“Can I borrow your playmate for a minute?”

Penny frowned and glanced between them. “But we’re doing a treasure map.”

Brad looked down to see a mockup of the Espera backyard in Nate’s neat hand with elaborate crayon additions. There was a pirate in one corner who looked a lot like Pappy, and Brad was dying to ask Nate if that was on purpose or by accident. 

Lacey, sitting across the table, looked up at Brad and said, “We need him to sail the boat while we fight the pirates.”

“I’ll bring him right back,” Brad reassured her.

“And then Brad can help us,” said Nate, because he was an asshole and a traitor. Brad had no idea why he liked him so much. Because he was perceptive in addition to being an asshole, Nate flashed him a quick grin from the ground.

He’d started to rise to his feet when Poke called his name from the patio. Startled, Nate overbalanced and grabbed the kids’ table and Brad’s shin to keep from falling on his ass. The girls giggled wildly.

“Rudy would probably have something to say about karma right about now.” 

Nate glared at him and extended a hand. Brad reached down and pulled him up, and for a second, Nate swayed a little closer than was necessary. Brad’s breath caught in his throat as the sun gilded familiar lips and eyes. He had a sharp image of Nate’s head thrown back, eyes screwed up, teeth biting into his bottom lip, begging without sound for Brad to touch him.

Poke called again, “Fick! Move your ass, I don’t know what the fuck to do with these stuffed peppers. You bring them, you grill them.”

Nate stepped back, and Brad took in a breath. Now was not the time for that. Nate looked down at the girls and said, “I have to go, but I’m sure Brad can help you with the pirates.” He gave Brad a cheerful smile and walked away. 

Once he got over the residual haze of lust that always came from Nate being a bastard, fighting pirates ended up being pretty fun. The doodle wasn’t of Pappy until Brad suggested it, but then the girls adopted the idea with enthusiasm. They were very open to Brad’s plan for how they could use the garden as camouflage to sneak up and ambush him, and they did reasonably quick work with the jump rope around his knees. It filled Brad’s heart with hope for the future generation.

By the time the Dread Pirate Patrick had been neutralized, dinner was ready and Nate had been released from grill duty. Brad left the girls to their parents and headed in to wash up. As he did, he saw out the kitchen window that Nate had already claimed a seat on the low wall at the back of the yard, flanked by Garza, Manimal, and Leon. Brad got enough of their shit at work, so he wouldn't be joining them. That was definitely out. He headed to the patio, piled his plate with food and went to find Kocher.

Brad wasn’t watching for Nate, exactly, but when he sat down, he made sure he chose a seat where he could see into the kitchen. Luckily, his divided attention wasn’t a problem. Shooting the shit with Kocher was never a hardship, and his son, Max, was pretty cool for a ten-year-old. As they ate, Max explained his plan for trapping one of the turtles in the pond in his backyard using the basket off of his bike and some worms he dug up from the garden. A key part of this plan involved digging a moat, but not one with water because turtles could swim, one with atomic spikes. Kocher rolled his eyes behind Max’s head as Brad inquired as to what, exactly, made a spike atomic.

Max was explaining something about a video game when Nate came into the kitchen to put his plate in the dishwasher. Brad caught his eye, and gestured to him to wait, and obligingly, Nate did. 

“Sorry, Max, I need to go talk to Nate for a second. Hold that thought.”

Max made a pouty face, but nodded, obviously resigned to vagaries of adults, and Brad got up to meet Nate.

“You really need to eat three more bites of green beans anyway, bud,” Kocher put in as he walked away.

People were scattered pretty evenly throughout the inside and outside of the house, but the dining room on the other side of the kitchen was temporarily empty, so Brad gestured for Nate to follow. Brad had never seen the Esperas use this room for eating, which made sense, since the wood paneling and thick, carpet made it seem small and dark, despite the bright sunshine outside. The table was covered with bills, kid’s artwork, and a pile of art supplies that looked like they belonged to a half-finished craft project. The only nod to the party was that the paper had been swept into neat piles.

Nate stopped three steps into the dining room, arms crossed and an eyebrow raised. “You wanted to talk to me?”

So he wasn’t planning on making this easy. All the nerves Brad hadn’t been feeling rushed his system at once. He hated looking at Nate and feeling like they were on different sides of anything. If they couldn’t go all the way back to the way things were, he at least wanted them to be okay.

“Last weekend. We were having a conversation, Ray’s moronic attempts at gymnastics interrupted us, and...”

“Colbert.” 

God-fucking-dammit, he could not catch a break today.

Brad and Nate turned to look at Kocher’s head poking around the doorframe. “Alicia wants you.”

“Now?”

Kocher looked grim. “Yeah, man. Apparently she has some questions about you teaching the kids about keelhauling?”

Next to him, Nate snorted, and when Brad looked over, he gave him a quick smile and shook his head. 

Brad was not cowed. “They wanted to know about pirates. I was just giving them the full picture.”

Kocher, who’d stepped more fully into the room, held up both hands in a defensive gesture. “Tell it to her.”

Brad was torn. On the one hand, he finally had Nate, relative quiet, and the chance to put all of this ugly shit to bed. On the other, pissing off Alicia was definitely a bad idea on a regular day, and today was her birthday. 

Nate must have sensed his hesitance, because he gave shifted to the side and said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Brad looked into his face for a long moment, searching for any hidden meaning, but Nate’s eyes didn’t give anything away. After another second, he stepped past Nate and followed Kocher to the backyard. On the way there, he was almost taken out at the knees by Isabella as she chased a remote-controlled monster truck Lacey was driving. He scooped her up and tossed her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, ignoring her as she giggled and pretended to try to get away. A little backup was always a good idea.  

✦

After his close call with Brad, Nate stepped out of the crowded house and into the warmth of the attached garage for a minute of relief. The door was open, and the afternoon sun danced over the concrete. The same barely controlled chaos that made the house so homey spilled over into the garage in a tangle of kids’ toys, sporting equipment, and who knows what crammed against the back wall. The only clear area in the garage was Poke’s meticulously ordered workbench on the far wall. Nate could hear the kids playing in the yard, but mercifully, no one was in sight. He wandered over to the doorway to look out at Poke’s neat suburban neighborhood.

The heat bouncing off of the driveway felt good after the overly air-conditioned house. Nate leaned against the frame of the garage door and closed his eyes, enjoying the sunshine on his skin and the comparative quiet.

He like parties. He liked Poke and Alicia’s family and friends. But every time Brad looked at him with significance in his eyes, Nate’s heart slammed into his chest with something resembling terror. He wished he had a few more days to get himself settled, to shore up his arguments as to why his life wasn’t as pathetic as it looked.

Nate opened his eyes again and stuffed his hands in his pockets. Even in his wildest dreams, he wasn’t getting through this party without having a well-meaning, if totally patronizing, conversation about taking care of himself. Brad had clearly been sitting on it since he’d gotten back. For a minute, though, Nate let himself imagine that, after, Brad would tug him into the circle of his arms and let Nate rest there.

Not that resting was the only thing he wanted to do in Brad’s arms, but even relaxed in the sun, Nate wasn’t going to go there. Some things were better left unthought. Especially in your friend’s garage at an afternoon birthday party.

The sounds of kids playing in the side yard pitched and rose in volume, and Nate let himself rest. He should go back to the party, but, at this moment, no one needed anything from him and there was nothing he needed to do. It was perfect.

“I thought you said you weren’t going anywhere,” Brad’s voice drawled behind him. Nate jolted, and then tried not to hunch his shoulders. “But instead I find you hiding out here.”

His voice was warm, but it wasn’t casual. He was carefully considering his words before he spoke. 

Nate turned to see him standing in the doorway to the house, a toy monster truck propped against his hip. Brad noticed Nate looking at the toy and smiled, genuinely relaxed this time. “Finally met its match in the garden wall. I’m supposed to see if I can unfuck it.”

He nodded to the workbench behind Nate, and came down the steps into the garage. Nate stepped to the side, and Brad sent him an inscrutable glance as he passed. With his back to Nate now, he reached for something and, at the same time, said “So...” in a dangerously cheerful voice.

Nate’s heart gave a solid thwack into his sternum, hard enough that it felt like it would bruise. All at once he realized his reasons for dreading this conversation had a lot less to do with pride, and a lot more to do with how badly he wanted to give in and say, “I know. I fucked up my life. Tell me what you think I should do.” 

It would be easy in the moment, with Brad standing in front of him, solid and trustworthy, but he’d hate himself forever, both for the shame of it and for making himself Brad’s problem again. So he was going to stand here and be gently chastised until Brad felt better, and then he’d let himself slink home to lick his wounds.

Nate squared his feet, braced himself, and said, “So…” Brad tossed him a wry look over his shoulder. 

Perhaps there was a limit to the bad luck that even Nate could have, because Christeson came skidding into around the corner and through the open garage door, and gasped, “There you are! I need your advice.”

At the workbench, Brad cursed softly. Nate pretended it was because he was having trouble with the toy. Brad was more of a software guy, after all. If they wanted hardware repair, they really needed Ray. It didn’t make much difference. He’d lost all pretense of dignity even inside his own head the first time he’d hurled an Espera kid at Brad to avoid a conversation. 

“Do you believe it makes sense to get back together with an ex?”

The stillness radiating off of Brad behind him was palpable. Brad was waiting for his answer as clearly as Christeson, who was staring up at Nate, his dark eyes wide. 

Stalling, Nate asked, “Why are you asking?”

“Okay, my sister’s got this ex, right, and he’s a real piece of shit. Invited her to move in with him and then when we arrived with the furniture, totally freaked out, said he wasn’t ready, he’d made a mistake. He fucking dumped her, man! Right on the street, and she didn’t have a place to live and she had to sleep on couches and she totally got screwed getting a new apartment and now she’s getting back together with him!”

Christeson was waggling his phone back and forth as if he’d just gotten the news and he looked positively outraged. Nate had lead in his stomach and a lump in his throat. Whatever words he spoke next had to be exactly perfect. He had to balance what he wanted Brad to hear with what Christeson needed to hear so he didn’t get on a plane and punch his sister’s boyfriend in the face.

“Maybe he’s sorry?” 

Christeson screwed up his face in wounded indignation. “Fuck that! He screwed her over!”

Nate took a breath and pulled himself together. This wasn’t about him and Brad. This was about Christeson being worried about his baby sister. Nate stepped forward, putting a little bit more space between them and the workbench. Not that it would make much difference, but there was always value in plausible deniability.

“John, nothing is ever that simple. You know that.”

Christeson scrunched up his face like a little kid. “He’s a spineless civilian dickcheese and he doesn’t deserve her.”

“It’s not about who deserves what. It’s about whether or not they can make each other happy. Whether they can build something strong together.”

“I just don’t see how she can forgive him.”

“Sometimes forgiveness comes from knowing where the other person was coming from, and knowing that they’re sorry and will work hard not to do it again. Listen,” Nate said, holding up a hand to prevent the objection he could see Christeson preparing, “Everybody fucks up. Sometimes you really love someone, but you aren’t ready when they come around, or you make a mistake or you’ve got your own shit that you haven’t dealt with, and you accidentally hurt the person you least want to. There’s nothing to do about it but learn from where things went wrong and work hard to do better next time.”

There was a quick noise from the workbench, and when Nate looked over his shoulder, Brad was picking up a screwdriver from the floor. Had he been listening? Of course he had. Nate didn’t want to think too closely about that. As Nate turned back to Christeson, there was a rustling behind him that he hoped was Brad returning to his project and ignoring them.

“Yeah, but LT,” Christeson was whining. “She’s moving in with him again! Like nothing happened!”

“I know you love your sister and you want to protect her, but she gets to make her own decisions, even if you don’t agree with them.”

“Even if they’re fucking stupid,” Christeson muttered sullenly.

“Even if they’re fucking stupid,” Nate agreed. “And if things go wrong again, and this guy turns out not to be worth her while, at least she’s got you to turn to.”

Christeson looked satisfied at that, and turned the conversation to the various creative ways he could torment this guy if he fucked up again, most of which seemed to involve siccing Qtip on him, which made sense to Nate. Qtip was a lot to deal with even if you knew and liked him. Nate listened, tried not to fidget, and tried not to listen for Brad moving behind him. He hadn’t felt this on edge since he’d forgotten how to spell “ennervate” in the finals of the state-wide spelling bee in 5th grade.  Jittery nerves had him feeling like he needed to move or die, but Nate forced himself to hold still and look attentive.

He was so busy trying to feign attention that his whole body jolted when Brad came up behind him. Christeson was talking about his grandmother now (Nate had clearly lost the thread somewhere) and Brad didn’t even bother to wait for him to pause, merely shoved a piece of paper in Nate’s hand, muttered, “I’m fucking done with this,” and stalked off. Christeson blinked like a baby deer stepping into light and then said, “Did I piss off Sgt. Colbert?”

“Don’t worry,” Nate said, trying to look cheerful. “He’s far more annoyed with me than he is with you. Excuse me, I need to...” 

He trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence, but luckily, Christeson took the hint and left, leaving Nate staring at the sheet of yellow legal paper in his hand. It was neatly folded in thirds, with his name scrawled across the front in Brad’s familiar spiky letters, all caps, and underlined. This should be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels very important that you all know that Alicia isn't really mad, she just likes to give Poke's friends a hard time, especially since they are always at her house being loud and eating all her food. And especially since half of them get all wide-eyes and panicky around kids.

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to reallyohcrap and bettsfic for making this what it is.


End file.
